LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 



FROM REASON AND REVELATION. 



" $as man tuitbin him an immortal seed? 
@r does tbe tomb take all ? ? ; 



BY 



LUTHER A. FOX, D. D., 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ROANOKE COLLEGE. 




2 3 - 



V 



R 



PHILADELPHIA: 
LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY. 



\ 



Vi 



•FT 



Copyright, 1890, 



LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY. 



The Library 

of Congress 

washington 



TO 

My Wife, 
HENRIETTA C. FOX, 

WHOSE SYMPATHY AND HELP HAVE MADE THIS WORK 
POSSIBLE AND PLEASANT. 

L. A. F. 



Who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality 
to light through the Gospel. — Paul. 

" To me the existence of another world is a necessary supple- 
ment of this, to adjust its inequalities and imbue it with moral 
significance.''' — Thurlow Weed. 

"The doctrine of the soul's immortality cannot be established 
by rigid demonstration, any more than that of the Divine ex- 
istence. But in the one, as in the other, there are necessary 
principles involved which work to obvious facts, and issue in a 
connection which may be described as natural.'" — McCosh. 

"The importance of a clear and well-founded belief in an 
eternal destination ca?i scarcely be overrated. It elevates, com- 
forts and sanctifies man with a peculiar power, whilst the re- 
sistance of it ordinarily brings about the most unfortunate 
results for religion and morality, as well as for the cause of 
humanity.''' — Van Oosterzee. 

"My own dim life should teach me this, 
That life shall live forevermore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core, 
And dust and ashes all that is." 

Tennyson. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
The Need and Character of Proofs of Immor- 
tality ii 

CHAPTER II. 
Argument from Analogy 27 

CHAPTER III. 
Universal Belief 43 

CHAPTER IV. 
Conscience 78 

CHAPTER V. 
Intellectual Powers 99 

CHAPTER VI. 
Sensibilities , 112 

CHAPTER VII. 
Condition of the World 128 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Evidence from the Bible 150 

CHAPTER IX. 

Proofs from the Old Testament 171 

(v) 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER X. 
Proofs from the New Testament 188 

CHAPTER XI, 
Soul and Life 210 

CHAPTER XII. 
Biology 225 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Relation of Mind and Body 240 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Nature of the Mind 257 

CHAPTER XV. 
Sensation 277 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Immateriality of the Soul 291 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Immortality of Brutes 295 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Historical Sketch of Philosophic Belief 307 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Practical Results of Disbelief in a Future Life. . 355 



PREFACE. 



''PHIS book was commenced as the first part of a 
work on Eschatology, but it is deemed better to 
publish it as a separate and independent volume. 
It has been written because it seemed to be needed. 
No one observant of the current thought among 
reading people can fail to notice a feeling of uncer- 
tainty and doubt as to a future life and a desire for 
clearer evidence. There is a want of fixed opinion. 
Many are respectful towards religion because they 
are not sure that there will be no future retribu- 
tion, but their doubts neutralize religious impres- 
sions and paralyze their spiritual energies. They 
would be glad to accept the truth if they knew how 
to find it. Much of the seeming weakness of the 
Church and the lack of power in the pulpit has its 
true explanation in the absence of a faith in our 
immortality. 

There are Christians who have not attained 
(7) 



S PREFACE. 

intellectual satisfaction. They have religious faith, 
but they would like to have proved to their under- 
standings what their hearts accept. 

This uncertainty has been felt in all ages. It is 
due in our day to the fact that fundamental beliefs 
are being subjected to a thorough re-examination. 
It is known that some of the old proofs of immor- 
tality have lost much of their force, but »it is not 
known how many remain untouched. Science has 
made wonderful discoveries, and there is a suspic- 
ion, encouraged by reckless speculators, that it has 
been proved that there is no other life. 

The lack of satisfaction arises in part, also, from 
a failure to consider the nature of the only possible 
evidence in this question. If one looks for demon- 
stration where demonstration is impossible he must 
go away dissatisfied. It is of the greatest import- 
ance to know the kind of proof to be expected and 
upon which he must form his judgment. 

The aim of this book is to show the nature of the 
proof of a future life and to set forth the evidence in 
the light of the present. The author from personal 
experience and from association with educated 



PREFACE. 9 

young men knows how to sympathize with honest 
doubt. He appreciates the cravings of the heart 
and the mind, and has sought to deal frankly and 
fairly with them. He has tried to state honestly 
and fully every objection that fell under the line of 
his discussion, to minimize no difficulty and mag- 
nify no proof. He has endeavored to present the 
truth in its true light and leave it to the judgment, 
of his readers. How well this aim has been met, 
and the field been covered by this book the public 
must decide. 

The plan will be so easily seen that only a word 
in regard to it is necessary. In the first chapter 
there is a general view of the nature of the argu- 
ment. To the eleventh chapter there are positive 
proofs. The following seven are chiefly defensive. 
They are necessarily largely metaphysical and the 
facts are condensed, sometimes it may be to a little 
obscurity. The historical review proves to be a 
strong argument. The last chapter shows the 
truth by the results of disbelief. 

So many references are given in the body of the 
book that no general acknowledgement is required. 



IO PREFACE. 

The author has drawn from his general reading 
and, has used, doubtless, the thoughts of other 
writers while mistaking them for his own, but 
the most important question is not in respect to 
originality but truth. 

The author must be excused for expressing the 
hope, as he parts with this little book, that it may 
accomplish some good in the world. 

Iv. A. F. 

Roanoke College, October, 1890. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE NEED AND CHARACTER OF PROOFS OF 
IMMORTALITY. 

WHAT is after death? This is the greatest 
problem of the world. The question as to 
our origin, often coupled with it, is much less im- 
portant, for it has only a speculative value except 
as it helps to determine our eternal destiny. We 
want to know from what we came that we may 
learn what we are to be. The desire for immortal- 
ity is universal, and it increases in force as we rise 
in nobility and worthiness of character. It is 
quickened under a sense of danger of losing it. 
The current of scientific opinion tends towards the 
belief in a future life. There is a "visible diminu- 
tion in the hostility once entertained by science to 
the idea." But as so many old faiths have been 
shaken there is a fear in the public mind that the 
foundations upon which this rested has been un- 
settled. Anxiety because of the great interests in- 
volved makes a new demand for the proofs that 
death does not end all. 

The discoveries in science and philosophy within 
(") 



12 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the present century has brought some new light to 
this problem. Biological studies and physiological- 
psychology have taught us much upon the nature 
of life, and the relation of the body to thought. 
We have learned more of the methods of nature in 
the development of the world. Our acquaintance 
with the range of law in all directions has been ex- 
tended. We may not be ready yet to determine 
the final bearing of the new truth upon the faith 
in our future existence, but we may gather up the 
results already attained and see the trend of scien- 
tific investigation. We may learn how many of 
the old proofs remain to us, what new ones have 
been furnished, and some of the tendencies of the 
higher thought upon this subject. We may see 
very clearly that nothing now known warrants the 
opinion that science has proved or will ever be able 
to prove that there is no future life, or if there is, 
that we can know nothing about it. 

By a future life or immortality, we understand a 
continued conscious existence. The Materialist 
and the Pantheist speak-of immortality, but not of 
a conscious self after death. As one of them has 
said, "We believe in an immortality, not of the 
individual but of the race." David's Positivist's 
Primer has expressed that common faith a little 



NEED AND PROOFS OE IMMORTALITY. 1 3 

more fully: "We believe that there is a real im- 
mortality for man, both objective and subjective, 
but no conscious life hereafter so far as our facul- 
ties go." Harrison still more clearly said: "It 
may be useful to retain the words soul and future 
life for their association, provided we make it clear 
that we mean by soul the combined faculties of the 
living organism, and by future life the subjective 
effects of each man's objective life on the actual life 
of his fellowmen." The Materialist does not deny 
that the separate powers, which in combination 
constituted life, continue to exist. The doctrine 
of the correlation of forces, now universally ac- 
cepted, prevents him from believing in absolute 
annihilation. But according to Materialism we 
lose at death our identity, and we continue to 
exist only in other forms. The organism is de- 
stroyed, and with it mind and self perish. The 
elements which made us are dissipated and enter 
into new and diverse combinations. The Pantheist 
may believe in the unity of the personal force and 
regard it as something distinct from the body, but 
that something is at death absorbed in God. All 
.personality is lost. Memory, will and conscious- 
ness are destroyed. That which we call ourself is 
swallowed up in deity. He may think that the 



14 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

present life has some influence upon our future con- 
dition, and that it is important to live in such 
manner as will enable us to pass over into the next 
form in the best possible condition, but of real ac- 
countability and reward there are none. In the 
view of both philosophies, self as such is annihi- 
lated. 

Such unconscious impersonal existence as these 
philosophers hold out to us has the least possible 
degree of importance or interest. It is not the 
Christian doctrine of a future life. It is not what 
men in all ages mean by immortality. It is not 
that which the human heart desires nor that in 
which it instinctively believes. Under the form of 
reality the doctrine resolves into a shadow. We 
feel that we have been mocked. We asked for 
bread but are given a stone, and for a fish there is 
given a serpent. It is not mere existence that we 
want. We are not particularly concerned about the 
fate of the forces of the body. We desire the con- 
tinuity of conscious life. We want to carry with 
us our memories to testify to our identity. We 
want the preservation of our faculties which are 
the elements of self. This is the only immortality 
worthy of our personality. Having conceived the 
possibility of such a future life we are indignant at 
the tender of any other. 



NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 1 5 

The Christian believes in his immortality be- 
cause it is a fact of revelation. The Bible does 
not offer any argument for the immortality of 
human life except that which is drawn from itself. 
Christ in answering the objection of the Sadducees 
to the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection proves a 
future life, which was involved, by appealing to 
the books of Moses. The Bible assumes our im- 
mortality as a fact. It claims to be a revelation, 
and the certification of that claim, which it pre- 
supposes, sets aside the necessity of direct argu- 
ments for its facts. But the Bible affords us our 
greatest certainty. All the evidence which it has 
for itself as a supernatural revelation is evidence 
also of our immortality. Even if we deny it a 
supernatural character, and regard it inspired only 
in the lowest sense, its statements must be taken 
as the highest attainments of quickened insight 
and therefore as truth. It gives us evidence, also, 
by awakening a conviction stronger than that 
which comes from external credentials. It calls 
into exercise the higher elements of our nature 
and with them comes the assurance of a personal 
relationship with the eternal. It begets a sense of 
immortality. Under the power of its truth, we 
know ourselves immortal by a spiritual intuition. 



l6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

To the mere rationalist this may seem like mystic- 
ism. Whatever name may be appropriate for it 
the fact belongs to Christian experience. Men 
whose characters are well known to be above sus- 
picion of fanaticism or superstition or irrational 
sentiment, unless all religion is superstition, have 
borne testimony to it. "The faith of immortality 
depends on a sense of it begotten, not on an argu- 
ment for it concluded." (Bushnell.) "Faith in 
eternal things brings into the soul a sense of 
eternity." (James Freeman Clarke.) "It would 
seem that the highest and holiest soul carries with 
it, like an atmosphere, a perfect serenity, a sense 
of present eternity, a presage of immortality." 
(Merriam.) "It is the life of humanity in Christ 
that is the evidence of the incorruptible, the 
immortal life. The Christ has brought to the 
spirit of man, the realization of life and immor- 
tality; he has brought life and immortality to 
light." (Mulford.) "The belief in immortality 
is at first only a wish and a belief on the authority 
of others; but the more that any one assures to 
himself his spiritual life by his own free efforts and 
a pure love of goodness, the more certain does 
eternity become, not merely as something future 
but as something already begun." (Hase). "Im- 



NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 1 7 

mortality begins here." (Charming). This idea 
is embodied in the lines of Tennyson: 

" Who forged that other influence, 
That heat of inward evidence 
By which he doubts against the sense.'*" 

And Lessing seems to have had the same thought, 
when he said, u Thus was Christ the first practical! 
teacher of the immortality of the soul. For it is 
one thing to wish, to conjecture, to hope for, to 
believe in immortality as a philosophical specula- 
tion — another thing to arrange all our plans and 
purposes, all our inward and outward life in ac- 
cordance with it." To these testimonies a great: 
many others, collected from different ages and: 
countries, might be added. This Christian assur- 
ance comes largely as a feeling, but there is a per- 
ceptive power in all feeling as there is a feeling in 
all perception. Hamilton says that every ultimate 
truth is a feeling ; and the self-evidence of primary 
principles is closely connected with the feelings... 
The analogy to philosophic truth and the testimony 
of so many thoughtful men are certainly sufficient 
reasons for checking a rash charge of fanaticisms 
upon the Christian's certainty of a future life. 

Besides this first and great source of certainty, 
there is other evidence. President Bascom has saidi ; 



1 8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

"The foundations of a faith in a future life lie out- 
side of revelation and ought therefore to be dis- 
closed independently of it." The attempt to sepa- 
rate knowledge and faith, now popular in high 
quarters, is an effort to divorce that which God has 
joined together. Bacon remanded all religious 
truth to faith and has had a disciple in this respect 
in as devout a Christian and eminent a philosopher 
as Prof. Baden Powel. A faith that does not stand 
without conflicting with science must at length fall. 
Our nature is a unity and our intellectual and 
religious convictions must harmonize. The Chris- 
tian feels a certain satisfaction in finding his faith 
confirmed by reason because his intellectual nature 
has wants as well as the religious. Because of the 
unity of his being there is an inter-dependence 
among the different elements, and he cannot throw 
off these laws. The body exerts an influence upon 
the mind, an5 the mind upon the body, and both 
upon the religious character. The flesh lusteth 
against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, 
and if we live after the flesh we shall die. The 
report of the senses are subjected to the test of the 
understanding, and the theories of the understand- 
ing are tested by the senses. Scholasticism neg- 
lecting observation paid the penalty by its barren- 



NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 1 9 

ness. The understanding obtains its laws from the 
reason, and reason without the material furnished 
by the understanding is empty form. The under- 
standing rebelling against the reason is chained to 
the contingent, and the reason throwing aside the 
help of the understanding soars into the mists and 
loses itself in airy nothingness. Whenever the 
natural relation is disturbed there is a vague unsat- 
isfied desire. So the facts of the religious life must 
be brought down, whenever possible, to the test of 
the intellect. In this way we keep our faith rational 
and avoid fanaticism and superstition. This intel- 
lectual want is seen in regard to the faith in the 
existence of God. No Christian doubts that God 
is, but the large number of books giving theistic 
proofs show how much interest the Christian un- 
derstanding takes in them. He'believes independ- 
ently of the arguments, but he draws from them a 
confirmation of his faith. They meet a demand of 
his nature. In the same way the Christian faith 
finds a satisfaction in the proofs of a future life. 

The Christian religion presupposes a belief in 
immortality, and that belief must come from 
proofs independent of Revelation. These proofs 
show those who are not Christians that there are 
some rational grounds for the Christian's hope. 



20 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

These proofs may not produce positive conviction, 
but they open the way for religious impressions. 
They answer a purpose analogous to the evidences 
of Christianity. No man rising from a careful 
study of the evidences has ever felt that there was 
not a possibility of doubt. The evidences alone 
have never made a man a Christian, and therefore 
no converted infidel has been able to explain satis- 
factorily the steps by which he became a believer. 
But these evidences are of great importance in over- 
coming opposition and creating a religious suscep- 
tibility. Wesley is said to have done more than 
Butler to overthrow Deism in England, but 
Wesley's work would not have been possible with- 
out that of Butler and his great co-workers. The 
arguments for a future life may not leave us with- 
out some doubt, but they are important to lead us 
under the influence of Christian truth which gives 
us certitude. 

A review of the arguments for immortality is the 
more important, both for the Christian believer and 
for others, because of the sceptical tendencies of 
our age. There is a materialistic spirit or mater- 
ialistic habit of thought out of which doubts as to 
the future life spring up spontaneously in the pub- 
lic mind. The spirit originates in three causes. 



NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 21 

One is the rapid strides in material progress made 
in the more recent years. So many energies of 
mind and body are concentrated upon material 
things, that the habits of thinking have been 
thrown into materialistic channels. Another cause 
is the rapid progress of physical science. The at- 
tention of the reading world is largely occupied 
with the new sciences which have recently sprung 
up, and the great discoveries made in the older 
ones. In the physical world the law of necessity 
rules, and as we watch the operations of that law 
we lose sight of the world of freedom. The last 
cause is the state of philosophy. In the English 
speaking world a materialistic philosophy, if not 
dominant, is exerting a very great influence upon 
public thought. It has its power because it falls 
in with the general modes of thinking. Specula- 
tive philosophy in Germany, in the early part of the 
century went entirely beyond the range of ordinary 
minds, and, as many philosophers have thought, lost 
itself in the mists of the Absolute. The results 
were not satisfactory, not even to the Germans, 
and there has been a groping about to find a sub- 
stantial basis for metaphysics. Many have become 
sceptical in philosophy and discard metaphysics. 
It is no uncommon thing to hear scholarly men 



22 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

say, "We have no confidence in metaphysical 
philosophy. We want facts. " Materialistic phil- 
osophy professes to proceed by observation and 
bring all its reasonings down to the test of feeling. 
It claims to assume no a priori principles, but to 
deal only with facts. It denies, under the modest 
disclaimer of not being able to know the existence 
of God or a spiritual substance. It grew out of the 
condition of the public mind and reacts upon it, 
intensifying, by seemingly justifying the public 
sentiment. It is important, therefore, to call at- 
tention again to the evidence that we are not ma- 
chines, that life is not mechanical, that we do know 
a force that is not under the law of necessity, and 
that there are strong reasons for believing in a 
future life. 

Too much is often expected from the proofs of 
immortality. We are so deeply interested in the 
subject we would be glad to have every doubt re- 
moved. What would be regarded as overwhelming 
evidence on most subjects leaves us in this with the 
feeling of Johnson, "I wish that there were more 
proofs." We would be glad to have absolute cer- 
tainty, and if we do not find it we are inclined to 
depreciate the value of the proofs we have. This 
is the reason for the neglect of the arguments which 



NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 23 

have come down to us from the past. It is not be- 
cause they have no force, but because they have 
not all the force the feelings crave. The character 
of the problem is forgotten, and unreasonable de- 
mands are made by the feelings. 

The proof cannot be demonstrative. A demon- 
stration is a necessary deduction from self-evident 
principles. It starts with necessary truths, truths 
which cannot without absurdity be denied, and it 
proceeds by self-evident steps. We can demon- 
strate a proposition in Geometry because we start 
with axioms, and having created figures in pure 
space we apply these axioms to every step in the 
analysis, and thus test the correctness of the pro- 
cess. Demonstrative proof belongs to mathematics. 
But there are no intuitions of reason to be taken as 
premises for a demonstration of a future life. 
There is no A=A in the argument as Leibnitz 
says there is in mathematical reasoning, and by 
which he explains the absolute conviction produced. 
The steps are not exposed to intuitions so that we 
can test and verify them as we proceed. We can- 
not find premises so certain that the contradictories 
are absurd, and there must always remain in the 
conclusion the possibility of doubt. The mathe- 
matical form of reasoning is sometimes assumed 



24 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

and many persons are deceived by it. Spinoza's 
Ethics appears to be a mathematical demonstration, 
bnt he started from principles which are not neces- 
sary, and in the process he introduced elements 
from experience. We may throw the argument 
for immortality, or the argument against it into a 
demonstrative form, but it can not be a demonstra- 
tion or reach an absolutely necessary conclusion. 
The subject lies outside of the sphere of necessary 
truth. The range of demonstrative .proof is very 
narrow. The most practical things cannot be 
demonstrated. We cannot demonstrate that the 
seed sown will produce its kind, or that the sun 
will rise to-morrow. Our demonstrations are con- 
fined to things that have the least to do with char- 
acter. To ask for that kind of certainty in things 
to which it can not possibly apply is simply foolish. 
If we cannot believe in immortality because we 
cannot demonstrate it, we are doomed to self- 
appointed doubt. 

The proof is necessarily of that kind which 
philosophers call probable. It is called probable 
not because it is opposed to certainty, but to math- 
ematical reasoning. The premises are obtained 
from testimony and experience; and while they may 
be unquestionable facts, they are always subject to 



NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 25 

the thought of a contrary possibility. We can 
always think the contradictory of the premises. 
These probable proofs admit of additions. The 
convictions produced range from a mere belief up 
to a certainty only short of the absolute. The 
great body of our knowledge is, in the philosophic 
sense of the word, probable. This is the law of our 
present condition, and we cannot get above it. 
Since the time of Bacon, great importance is at- 
tached to induction, and no one doubts that by the 
faithful application of his rules we get truth; but 
inductive reasoning is only probable reasoning. 
Historical and Geographical facts beyond our own 
personal sphere are known by probable proof. 
Reasoning from personal experience belongs to the 
probable. It is only by probable proof that we 
know that water will on to-morrow relieve thirst, 
or that there will be a to-morrow. We are gov- 
erned continually by probable reasoning. It is 
upon these probable proofs we must rest our faith 
in our immortality. 

We may recognize this fact, but still want the 
evidence brought within the reach of our senses. 
We think that if we co'uld see a disembodied soul 
or have some sensible proof of its existence after 
the death of the body we would be above doubt. 



26 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

We can conceive the possibility of such evidence, 
but we must recognize it as something outside of 
the established order of facts. It can not be re- 
alized and it is useless to wish for it. We must 
accommodate ourselves to the world as it exists. 
But if gratified we might not find all we antici- 
pate. The Great Teacher, who has uncovered so 
many of the principles of our nature and revealed 
to us so much of ourselves, said, "If they hear not 
Moses and the Prophets neither will they be per- 
suaded, though one rose from the dead. n We 
might be like the Sadducees who knew of the 
resurrection of at least three persons but still 
denied that there are angels and spirits. If we 
may trust the wisdom of Him who has done so 
much for us, it is better that we should not have 
these sensible proofs else He would have given 
them to us. 






CHAPTER II. 
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 

ANALOGICAL, reasoning is based on resemb- 
lance. When one thing resembles another in 
known particulars, we conclude that it resembles it 
also in the unknown. Logicians differ as to the exact 
subjects of resemblance. Some say that it does not 
imply the similarity of two things, but of two rela- 
tions. Thompson says, " But in popular language 
we extend the word analogy to resemblance of 
things as well as relations. ' ' With this Mill agrees : 
"We extend the name of analogical evidence to 
arguments from any sort of resemblance, provided 
they do not amount to a complete induction ; 
without peculiarly distinguishing resemblance of 
relations." Whether we place the resemblance in 
relations or in objects, the argument implies that 
the resemblance originates in some common cause 
not yet known. 

Analogy is like induction in several important 
particulars. Both are based upon resemblance, and 
both proceed upon the uniformity of nature. If the 

proof stops short of complete induction, it is called 

(27) 



23 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

analogy. It produces every degree of belief, from 
that of slight probability up to a very strong con- 
viction ; but it can never, from its nature, give us 
certainty. It has been of great service in several 
directions. It has led science to experiment and 
thus been the means of discovering very important 
facts. It has guided philosophy to profound prin- 
ciples. It is often very useful in answering objec- 
tions. It offers support to other methods of prob- 
able reasoning. 

Analogical reasoning is exposed to many falla- 
cies. There are metaphorical analogies which are 
always either false or worthless. Logicians have 
given us canons which must be carefully observed. 
Thompson states the most important in this way : 
"The same attributes may be assigned to distinct 
but similar things, provided they can be shown to 
accompany the points of resemblance in the things 
and not the points of difference." The points of 
resemblance must be compared with the known 
points of difference and with the probable qualities 
not yet known. The greater the number of points 
of resemblance among the known, the stronger is 
the probability of agreement among the unknown. 
A radical difference destroys the argument drawn 
from a number of agreements. 



ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 29 

All analogical reasoning assumes the fact that 
nature is uniform. Without this principle neither 
analogy nor induction would be possible. It is 
not necessary to defend the principle, but it may be 
important to call attention to the fact that it is not 
itself a primary truth. We can, without a feeling 
of absurdity, imagine the whole order of nature 
changed. The uniformity of nature is an inference 
from the primary principle that the same forces 
under the same conditions must produce the same 
results ; or, in other words, the same causes must 
produce the same effects. Resemblances imply the 
same or similar causes, and from known effects we 
infer others not known. 

Resemblance may be produced by different prox- 
imate causes, and may seem at first to be worthless 
as proof, but sometimes the common result may be 
traced back to the same remote cause. The same 
power operates through different agents. Carbon 
is brought as a nourishment in very different arti- 
cles of food. Until chemistry discovered the com- 
mon constituent, very different causes seemed to 
produce the same effect. It is a well-known fact 
that the world is made up of a few elements, and 
there are indications that the number will be still 
further reduced. Philosophy, centuries ago, guessed 



30 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

at this result. The ancient Greek philosophers 
thought that there were only four elements. An- 
aximander thought that the infinite was reduced to 
order by condensation and rarefaction. Others 
thought that there was only one thing, as water, 
fire, air or ether, which was both the material and 
efficient principle. Within recent centuries New- 
ton's law of gravitation has brought into unity a 
great diversity of phenomena. Further discoveries 
will find one law controlling facts which are now 
never thought of together. Monistic philosophies, 
which to-day dominate so large a portion of the 
speculative world, are efforts to reduce the entire 
universe to unity. Analogy may obtain a wider 
range than is thought of in the present stage of 
science. The force in metaphors and illustrations 
may yet be shown to be a half-conscious recogni- 
tion of the hidden relations of causes. 

Theism believes that all causes originate in a 
Great First Cause — a personal God — who is author 
of all things. Materialistic science, as soon as it 
begins to account to itself for its faith and look for 
ultimate principles, is compelled to recognize a 
great first force, the source and centre of all forces. 
Atheism knows nothing behind it, but Theism 
recognizes a Being to whom the force belongs. 



ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 3 1 

We know force in will, but we know of no force 
that is certainly independent of will, and Theism 
starts from the known while Atheism proceeds 
from the unknown. The great world force pro- 
duces intelligible results. It has built up a world 
full of beauty and order. It has brought into ex- 
istence intelligent beings. It must therefore be 
itself intelligent, for no effect can rise higher than 
its cause. This intelligent force we call God. He 
established the laws of the universe, and in him we 
have a unifying principle for all diversity. In God 
analogy and induction find their highest and only 
sufficient ground. Natural forces working blindly 
may produce resemblances, but these facts cannot 
furnish a basis for reasoning, for causes which have 
no thought cannot give rise to thought in others. 
The fact that mind can understand the operations 
of matter shows that there are some laws common 
to mind and the physical world ; the inter-depend- 
ence of the religious, moral, intellectual and physi- 
cal powers shows that there are laws that compre- 
hend all of them. Theism best explains the world 
as it is by saying God created all things and rules 
them by the highest laws, making the lower and 
more familiar things means of revealing the higher 
and more hidden truths. But even if we stop in 



32 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

our conclusion short of a personal God, the har- 
mony which we are compelled to admit points back 
to some great principles which hold the world in 
unity. Thus, according to either scheme, Atheistic 
or Theistic, the fact of these higher laws warrants 
us in reasoning from the resemblances between 
physical and spiritual in the known to still further 
agreements. Analogy strengthens our belief in 
revealed doctrines. When we find these agree- 
ments between the facts of nature and scriptural 
teachings increasing under profounder studies, we 
are confirmed in our faith in those where no special 
analogy has been, or can be, discovered. Indi- 
rectly, at least, analogy furnishes a proof of a future 
life. 

Recently Prof. Drummond has called attention 
to some remarkable correspondences between the 
laws of the natural world and the teachings of the 
Bible. He has perhaps misnamed his principle by 
calling it natural law in the spiritual world. So 
far as he has pointed out laws, they were not physi- 
cal laws that reached up to the spiritual, but great 
laws lying behind both, ruling them in common. 
The spiritual and natural are distinct, and every 
effort to lift up the physical to the spiritual, or 
bring the spiritual down to the physical, must fail. 



ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 33 

But having one common Author they are ruled by 
the same ulterior common laws, and there are many 
striking resemblances. The one illustrates the 
other because the one exhibits in well-known facts 
the law that rules in the other. This is seen in re- 
gard to life. Physical and spiritual life are of very 
different natures, but the law of all life manifests 
itself in both, and the natural life illustrates to us- 
the movements of the more hidden spiritual life. 

The Paracelsians in the seventeenth century 
caught a glimpse of the unity of the universe. 
They taught that God operates in the kingdom of 
grace and the kingdom of nature by the same laws, 
and that those who understand how natural bodies 
are changed, understand the changes of the soul 
in regeneration. Robert Fludd, whom Mosheim 
pronounces a man of uncommon genius, and whose 
works Kepler answered; Jacob Boehm, the great 
mystical philosopher, and John Arndt, belonged to 
this school. But the truth was not clearly con- 
ceived nor faithfully applied, and mixed with 
cabalistic doctrines, was carried into Pantheism. 

Jesus Christ puts the matter of great common, 
laws beyond question. His masterly power of 
parabolic teaching is universally acknowledged. 
His parables carry the force of argument. They. 



34 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

are not merely illustrations, but proofs. He shows 
us the spiritual world by holding up before us the 
natural world. He does not point out the hidden 
forces or name the great laws, but we see that there 
is a common bond between the movements of the 
natural and the spiritual. These laws are the great 
major premises which control the conclusions but 
do not appear in the argument. God feeds the 
fowls of the air; he will, therefore, feed you. I am 
the vine, ye are the branches, therefore ye must 
bear my fruits. The rich man died and lifted up 
his eyes in hell. These parables are not metaphors, 
but the wonderful grouping of facts under great 
principles; and no one has been able to duplicate 
them because no one has had the profound insight 
of the Master into the laws of both worlds. 

The proof of a future life from analogy is not 
based upon direct resemblances. We have no 
sensible evidence of the continued existence of any 
individual life after the death of the organism. 
The argument can not be put in this form: A. 
lives after death. The soul is like A. in several 
other respects. Therefore the soul, like A., lives 
after death. But the analogy is based on some 
great laws, and thus furnishes a proof. The possi- 
bilities of analogy have not been exhausted, and 



ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 35 

some great philosophic mind may yet give it the 
force of which we now only faintly conceive. 

Bishop Butler has presented the argument in its 
strongest form, and the remaining part of this 
chapter will be devoted mainly to the reproduction 
of the leading points in that argument. 

Assuming the fact of personal identity or the 
spiritual nature of the soul, the change from the 
present to a future life is analogous to changes in 
nature and in ourselves. Prior to experience, we 
would have found a statement of the changes from 
infancy to manhood, from embryotic to separate 
life, from the crawling worm to the flying insect, 
as difficult to believe as we now do the promise of 
a life after death. If the unborn infant could be 
told of the changes at birth, he would be as in- 
credulous as we are as to those at death. 

With the assumption of a personal identity, 
independent of the bodily organism, we may reason 
from the great law of continuity to a future life. 
That law is: Everything which is now in ex- 
istence will continue to exist until some greater 
power destroys it. Nothing originates itself; 
nothing can destroy itself. The suicide only puts 
himself under the influence of powers which 
destroy his physical life. The law of continuity 



2,6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

is a law of the universe, as comprehensive as ex- 
istence itself. We constantly reason and act upon 
it. No one doubts it. We have the powers of 
thought now, and upon the law of continuity will 
have them after death, unless death destroys 
them. We must believe that they continue after 
death, unless there is a reason for believing that 
death destroys them. But there is no such reason, 
(i) because we do not know what death is and there- 
fore cannot know its effects further than they are 
sensibly manifested. These sensible effects do not 
extend to the destruction of the soul. (2) We can 
have no evidence that death destroys the soul, 
because we do hot know upon what the exercise 
of the powers of the soul depends. In sleep and 
especially in swoons, the -very capacity to exercise 
them seems to be suspended. Why it is sus- 
pended or how it is restored, we do not know. If 
we are ignorant of that upon which its activities 
are dependent, we are more ignorant as to that 
upon which the soul itself rests. Nothing known 
to us warrants us in saying that death interferes 
with the law of continuity. 

These arguments are of force only when the 
distinct existence of the mind and body are 
admitted. Butler carries his analogy back to 



ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 37 

prove what had been assumed. His first argu- 
ment is metaphysical. The unity of the soul is 
inferred from the unity of consciousness. We can 
not divide the consciousness of self, and therefore 
the substance in which it inheres, the subject of 
which it is the phenomenon, is indivisible and 
indestructible. From its unity is inferred its dis- 
tinct existence. 

This conclusion is confirmed by the facts of ob- 
servation. The limbs and senses may all be lost 
without affecting the soul. The limbs and senses 
even of the infant may be lost, and yet its soul ex- 
ists. The particles of our body change, but the 
soul maintains its identity. That which is con- 
stant in the midst of so much fluctuation must be 
distinguished from the. particles which are being- 
changed. The members of the body are only in- 
struments of the soul. The eye may be assisted by 
glasses, the ear by tubes, the lost limb replaced by 
an artificial one. That the one is in organic rela- 
tion to the soul does not invalidate the inferences 
that both are only instruments, and that the soul 
is distinct from them. The soul furnished with 
facts through the senses is by its memory and re- 
flection and imagination independent of these 
senses, and could carry 011 its work without them. 



38 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Mortal diseases do not destroy the soul, for it often 
retains its powers in undiminished vigor up to the 
very moment of death. Even if mortal disease did 
always diminish the activities of the mind, we 
could not infer that death destroyed them, because 
sleep and swoons always affect them, but do not 
destroy them. We do not know and have no rea- 
son for believing that death suspends the present 
powers of the soul, and much less therefore for be- 
lieving that it destroys them. 

The argument seems to prove too much, and 
therefore proves nothing. It seems to prove that 
the instinct of the animal and the life of the vege- 
table are immortal as well as the soul of man; but 
as these are known to perish, it does not prove that 
man is immortal. This objection assumes as true 
what is not known and what is not universally 
admitted. We do not know that either animal or 
plant life ends at death. But if we did, we could 
not infer from their fate the destiny of man. The 
soul of man has far higher powers than the vege- 
table life, and higher also than the mind of the 
most intelligent brutes. The differences are more 
important than the agreements, and no legitimate 
conclusion can be drawn. We are wholly ignorant 
as to their future, and we have no analogy. The 
objection, therefore, is without force. 



ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 39 

Bishop Butler's argument rests upon two great 
laws. The first — the law of continuity — is clearly 
announced. The other is only implied. It is this: 
distinct phenomena imply distinct substances, and 
different effects imply distinct causes. A large 
part of his argument is devoted to the evidence of 
distinct effects in human life, phenomena that can- 
not be accounted for on the supposition of only one 
substance in human nature. The phenomena of 
life lead us to believe that the soul is a distinct 
essence, and the law of continuity that it survives 
the body. 

The law of phenomena and substance governs us 
in our practical thinking. It is only through it we 
distinguish one object from another. It has in- 
fluenced the thought of the world in regard to the 
natures of the mind and body. The facts of con- 
sciousness are wholly diverse. Two contrary series 
of phenomena come into view. The one belongs 
to the body, and the other is ascribed to self. The 
distinction between self and the body may be an 
original datum of consciousness. The child seems 
to learn by experience that its limbs belong to it. 
The savage distinguishes between the man and his 
body, and while the body is in the grave he thinks 
of the man as living in some other sphere. We 



40 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

seem to make the distinction spontaneously, for it 
is implied in much of our thought about ourselves. 

Self in its own movements recognizes itself as 
distinct from that material organism with which it 
finds itself united and which it employs as its in- 
strument. 

This distinction, which is enveloped in the unre- 
flecting minds of the masses is easily drawn out 
into clear consciousness. Plato gives a dialogue 
between Socrates and Alcibiades in which is illus- 
trated the process of reflection, and it may be used 
as a supplement to the argument of Butler: 

Socrates. — Does not he who uses a thing seem to you always 
different from the thing used ? 

Alcibiades. — Very different. 

Soc. — Does the currier cut with his instruments alone or also 
with his hands ? 

Ale. — Also with his hands. 

Soc. — He then uses his hands ? 

Ale—Yes. 

Soc. — And in his work he uses also his eyes? 

Ale— Yes. 

Soc. — We are agreed, then, that he who uses a thing and the 
thing used are different ? 

Ale— We are. 

Soc. — The currier and lyrist are therefore different from the 
hands and eyes with which they work ? 

Ale. — So it seems. 



ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 4 1 

Soc. — Now then, does not a man use his whole body? 
Ale. — Unquestionably. 

Soc. — A man is there/ore different from his body ? 
Ale— So I think. 
Soc. — What then is the man ? 
Ale. — I cannot say. 

Soc. — You can at least say that the man is that which uses 
the body ? 
Ale— Yes. 

Soc. — Now, does anything use the body but the mind ? 
Ale— Nothing. 

Soc. — The mind is therefore the man ? 
Ale. — The mind alone. 

We reduce the argument to this form. The mind, 
which by spontaneous judgments, by analogy, and 
possibly by immediate intuition, recognizes itself 
as distinct from the body, must, upon the law of 
continuity, believe that it survives that which de- 
stroys the body. 

The argument from analogy has had much force 
in all ages. Sir Humphrey Davy gives a beauti- 
ful and forcible application of it. "The three 
states — of the caterpillar, larva and butterfly — have 
since the times of the Greek poets been applied to 
typify the human being — its terrestrial form, appar- 
ent death, and ultimate celestial destination; and it 
seems more extraordinary that a sordid and crawl- 
ing worm should become a beautiful and active fly 



42 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

— that an inhabitant of the dark and fetid dunghill 
should in an instant entirely change its form, rise 
into the blue air, and enjoy the sunbeams — than 
that a being whose pursuits here have been after an 
undying name, and whose purest happiness has 
been derived from the acquisition of intellectual 
power and finite knowledge, should rise into a state 
of being hereafter where immortality is no longer a 
name, and ascend to the source of unbounded 
power and infinite wisdom.'' 






CHAPTER III. 
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 

THE historical proof of a future life is based upon 
the universal belief. It consists of two parts : 
first, the establishment of the fact ; and secondly, 
an estimate of the importance of the fact as evi- 
dence. 

When it is said that the belief in a future life is 
universal it is not meant that absolutely all men, 
but that the vast majority of men, in all ages and 
countries, have believed in it. There have been 
individuals and even classes who have denied it. 
Positivists, Materialists and Pantheists cannot 
logically believe that for the individual there is 
another life. Skeptics, without denying, doubt. 
But the exceptions are not as numerous nor as 
important as is often supposed. Many who upon 
philosophic grounds deny, really believe. Strauss 
somewhere rebukes the pantheistic philosophers for 
the tenderness which spared self after they had 
repudiated God. He calls the hope of another life 
mere boastfulness. He attributes the desire in 
Gcethe to weakness following worn-out genius. 

(43) 



44 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Atheists, though they have torn up the foundation 
of the faith, not unfrequently look forward to exist- 
ence after death. Positivists shrink from annihil- 
ation, and Cointe believed it possible, by an act of 
will, to survive death. Pantheists sometimes seek 
to save individuality, and Hegel is said to have re- 
plied to one who charged upon his system the 
destruction of personality, that his categories did 
not include the soul. Hume, though bound by his 
philosophy only to doubt, said of himself at the 
time of his mother's death, "Though I throw out 
my speculations to entertain the learned and meta- 
physical world, yet in other things I do not think so 
differently from other men."* Voltaire, who was 
the great leader of infidelity in France and was 
very closely connected with those who avowed 
atheism, was only skeptical in regard to immortal- 
ity. Condorcet says, "He remained in almost ab- 
solute uncertainty as to the spirituality of the soul, 
and even its permanence after death, "f John 
Stuart Mill seems often to abandon all faith in a 
future life, yet he gives expression to this sober 
judgment, "The indulgence of hope with regard to 
the government of the universe and the destiny of 

*McCosh's Scottish Philosophy. 

t Cairns' Unbelief in Eighteenth Century. 




UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 45 

man after death, while we recognize as a clear truth 
that we have no ground for more than hope, is le- 
gitimate and philosophically defensible." * 

The disbelief, when it really exists, is not spon- 
taneous, but the result of speculative philosophy. 
We can not only distinguish between speculative 
and practical thought in general, but also find them 
in the same persons widely separated. Kant's dis- 
tinction between the speculative and practical rea- 
son is well known. Berkeley and Fichte were 
speculatively absolute idealists, but practically they 
were, like other men, natural realists. Theologi- 
cal rationalism in Germany furnishes many ex- 
amples. Professors in their lecture-rooms struck 
at the very foundations of Christianity, yet held to 
their hymn-books, liturgies and Bibles. Hume 
makes the distinction in the sentiment already 
given. Disbelief and doubt in regard to a future 
life are often only speculative, the published utter- 
ances are the language of the study, while behind 
them there is a practical faith shaping the life, and, 
on occasions calling for it, giving forth its own 
confession. Whatever hold they may have upon 
us, they are always the product of logical processes. 
Men come to them through reasoning. They are 

* Three Essays, p. 249. 



46 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

always secondary, following in respect of time the 
belief in immortality. The opinions, therefore, of 
speculative philosophers cannot be taken as import- 
ant exceptions to the universality of this faith. 

THE EVIDENCE OF THE FACT. 

The fact of the universality of the belief in a 
future life is now widely admitted, but it will be 
of service, especially to those who have not ex- 
amined the evidence, to have some of the more 
prominent points of it brought forward. 

In Europe the earliest man was cotemporary with 
the mammoth and the cave hyena. He has left 
traces of his life and thoughts in the caves in which 
he dwelt. He lived by hunting, and carried on a 
fierce struggle with wild beasts and inclement sea- 
sons for his existence. His period cannot be 
accurately determined, but conservative thinkers 
put him in the quaternary age, several thousand 
years before the generally accepted date of man's 
appearance on the earth. This European man is 
the oldest geological man. Rude as he was, and 
with a life little above the brutes, he cherished 
hopes of another life. Foster, who holds very ad- 
vanced views of man's antiquity, says: "Primeval 
man did not regard death as an endless sleep, as is 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 47 

shown by the implements and ornaments found in 
the sepulchres. That homage which in all ages 
and among all nations the living pay to the dead, 
those ceremonies which are observed at the hour of 
final separation, that care which is exercised to 
protect the manes from all profane intrusion, and 
those delicate acts prompted by love or affection 
which we fondly hope will soothe the passage to 
the happy land — all these observances our rude an- 
cestors maintained. These facts show that deep as 
man may sink in barbarism, brutal as he may be 
in his instinct, there is still a redeeming spirit which 
prompts to higher aspirations and that to him even 
there is no belief so dreary as that of utter annihil- 
ation."* The Canstadt race is regarded as the 
oldest in Europe, and thus the oldest known to 
Geology. Only a few of their dwelling places have 
been discovered. There are no traces thus far 
found of their places for burial, and we have no 
clew as to their view of death, and another life. 
They were followed by the Cro-Magnon race. The 
earlier members of this race were not much superior 
to the preceding one, but there are marks of a lit- 
tle progress in the improved implements. They 
were hunters, and in addition to the larger animals 

* Prehistoric Races, p. 33. 



48 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the horse appears as a favorite food. They had the 
rude beginnings of art, and there are etchings of 
animals and of men. Qua trefages asks, u Had the 
quaternary man any belief in another life? Had he 
a religion ?' ' and answers, ' ( There can be no doubt 
as to the first of these questions. The care bestowed 
upon burial-places shows that the hunters of Men- 
tone, as also those of Salutre and Cro-Magnon, be- 
lieved in the wants of the dead beyond the tomb. 
Our acquaintance with the customs of so many 
savage nations of the present epoch forbids any 
other interpretation of the interment of food, arms 
and ornaments with the body."* The next race 
was the Furfooz. The two experienced the great 
climatic changes of the glacial age. L,ike their 
predecessors they were hunters, but were pacific in 
disposition. In intellect they belong to a very low 
order, but they have left proofs of their belief in 
another life. In the sepulchral grotto where the 
I^es Nutons buried their dead, are a number of 
perforated shells, ornaments in spar, flat pieces of 
sandstone traced with sketches, a vase and flint 
implements. u It is clear that they had Been laid 
in the sepulchral vault under the impression that 
they would serve to supply the wants of the de- 

* Human Species, p. 328. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 49 

ceased in the new existence which was opening 
before them."* 

At a later period, but at an unknown age, were 
created in England the dolmens, menhirs and 
cromlechs, and great burial mounds. They are 
so many monuments of the belief of that day in 
a future life. Tylor thus speaks of them: "Pre- 
historic burial places in our country are still, 
wonders to us for the labor they must have cost 
their barbaric builders. Most conspicuous are the 
great burial mounds of earth or cairns of stone.. 
Some of the largest of these seem to date from the 
stone age. But their use lasted on through the 
bronze into the iron age. Within the old burial 
grounds or barrows, there may be a cist or rude 
chest of stone slabs for the interment, or a 
chamber of rude stones, sometimes with gal- 
leries. " "In the barbaric religion which has left 
such clear traces in our midst, what is supposed to 
become of the soul after death ? The answers are 
many, but they agree in this, that the ghosts must 
be somewhere whence they can come to visit the 
living, especially at night time."t 

The date of man's appearance in America is a 

* Human Species, p. 344. 
t Anthropology, p. 348, 349. 
3 



50 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

disputed point. The juxtaposition of bones in 
Missouri, and a pipe with a good drawing of the 
mammoth found in Iowa, seem to indicate that 
man came before that animal disappeared. But 
this is denied by eminent authority. The earliest 
known race was the Mound-builders. Their 
period is undetermined. Short says, "We have 
seen that as yet no truly scientific proof of man's 
great antiquity in America exists. This con- 
clusion is concurred in by most eminent author- 
ities. At present we are not warranted in 
claiming for him a much longer residence on this 
continent than that assigned him by Sir John 
Lubbock viz; three thousand years."* These 
Mound-builders may belong to any period from a 
thousand to three or four thousand, or even 
longer, years ago. They belong, however, to 
what are called the prehistoric races, and at the 
time they occupied the territory of the U. S. were 
low in the scale of civilization. The mounds, 
among other purposes, were burial places. From 
a burial mound near Chillicothe, about two 
hundred pipes carved in stone, pearl and shell 
beads, copper tubes and copper ornaments, were ob- 
tained. This mound is a specimen of them, though 

* North Americans of Antiquity, p. 130. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 5 1 

the offerings to the dead were in the earlier 
mounds very often of a ruder character. Foster 
has described their burial customs as learned from 
the relics: "The corpse was almost invariably 
placed near the original surface of the soil, 
enveloped in bark or coarse matting, and in a few 
instances fragments of cloth have been found in 
this connection. Sometimes it was placed in a 
sitting position, again it was extended, and still 
again it was put within contracted limits. 
Trinkets were often strung about the neck; water- 
jugs, drinking cups and vases, which probably 
contained food, were placed near. The com- 
parative absence of. warlike implements is a 
noticeable fact." "All the circumstances seem 
to indicate that burial was a solemn and deliberate 
rite, regulated by fixed custom of perhaps re- 
ligious or superstitious origin."* Some of the 
mounds were for sacrifices, and there were human 
offerings. These things touchingly reveal to us 
the deep feelings towards God and the life to 
come, that stirred in the bosoms of the men who 
roamed in the western wilds many centuries ago. 
All scientific evidence, as well as Biblical, points 
to Asia as the original home of man. Far back 

* Prehistoric Races, pp. 188, 189. 



52 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the great Aryan race divided, and one branch 
rolled down into India and became the Hindu peo- 
ple. The relation of their language to ours, the 
increased facilities of becoming acquainted with 
their ancient books, and growing commercial rela- 
tions, have developed among us a profound interest 
in them. There is evidence that they carried with 
them from central Asia a belief in a future life. In 
the Vedas Yama is the impersonation of life after 
death. He has been supposed to be in their tradi- 
tions the Adam of the Scriptures. He is repre- 
sented as receiving all who ' die into the spirit 
world. The Iranians call the impersonated future 
life Yima. The father of Yama in the Vedas is 
Vivasat, and the father of Yima in the Zend-Avesta 
is Vivanghat. The similarity of names of both 
father and son shows that the Yama of the one is 
the Yima of the other, and also that both races be- 
lieved in a future life before the division which 
took place beyond the reach of certain historic 
chronology. 

In the earlier books of the Veda there are not 
many statements as to future existence, but they 
are sufficiently numerous to show that belief in it 
lies at the very heart of their religion. "It was 
not a positive, abstract conception," says Fairbairn, 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 53 

" still it was as comprehensive as was possible to 
the early Hindus."* Samuel Johnson, writing of 
the same early age, says, "We hail the simplicity 
of this moral and religious instinct, so frank and 
direct, like the opening eyes of the child, or move- 
ments at play. This entire confidence in immortal- 
ity was based on an instinctive trust in the con- 
tinuity of life and in destiny proportionate to the 
best desires." "The instinct of continued exist- 
ence is found so deeply embodied in the Vedic 
poems for the very reason that it is so closely as- 
sociated with the affections. Every god and every 
good act it would seem was the promise of immor- 
tality." He quotes Burnouf: "The belief in the 
immortality of the soul, not naked and inactive, 
but living and clothed with a glorious body, was 
never interrupted for a moment; it is now in India 
what it was in ancient times, and even rests on a 
similar metaphysical basis, "f The simple faith 
of the Vedas under the influence of the priests and 
philosophers was made more definite, and at last 
was almost or quite lost in Brahmanism. In the 
Bhagavid Gita we find still the old belief in a 
personal immortality. "As the soul in the body 

* Cotemporary Review, 1871. 

t Oriental Religions. India, p. 133. 



54 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

undergoes changes of infancy, youth and age, so it 
obtains a new body hereafter. As a man abandons 
worn-out clothes, and takes new ones, so does the 
soul quit worn-out bodies and enter others."* It 
is well known that the later Hindus believed the 
doctrine of transmigration, a new form of the old 
doctrine, attesting the existence of the belief in 
immortality. Buddha introduced the idea of 
Nirvana. About the exact nature of Nirvana schol- 
ars are not agreed. James Freeman Clarke says, 
"At present the best Buddhist scholars incline to 
the belief that Nirvana does not mean annihilation, 
but immovable rest. It probably means what 
Christianity means by the rest of the soul in God."f 
But if it does mean annihilation, it has only the 
value of a speculative opinion. 

The age of the Chinese is not known, but they 
came down from a very early period. They are 
tenacious of customs, and from the present na- 
tional habits we may reason back to a remote past. 
The ancestral shrine testifies to the belief in a 
future life. It has been transmitted from a very 
early day. "From the oldest times," says John- 
son, "the ancestral shrine has held the first place 

* Ch. 2. 

t Ten Great Religions. Part II, p. 332. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 55 

in the Chinese affections." "The Shiking de- 
scribes the music and dances and pleasant viands 
in these dwellings of the expected ones, three 
thousand years ago." "The candle at the bedside 
of the dead, and the paper money and clothes 
burned for his service, have been supposed to prove 
that the dead are conceived as ghosts groping in 
darkness and indigence, but the symbols of senti- 
ment must not be too literally read." "The filial 
piety of the living would fain establish a real union 
with the dead. Such invocations are common : 
'Thy body is laid in the grave but thy spirit dwells 
in this temple of our home. We beseech thee, 
honored one, to free thyself from thy former body 
and abide in this tablet forever.' "* The Chinese 
have held for centuries a doctrine of evolution. 
Man was born of nature, but he is composed of a 
spiritual, as well as animal part. At death the 
spiritual ascends to heaven, the animal descends to 
dust. The philosophers did not directly teach the 
doctrine of immortality, but they taught nothing 
inconsistent with it according to the Chinese mode 
of thought. The people carry the belief into 
e very-day life. They announce every important 
family event to their ancestors. They pay devo- 

* Oriental Religious. China, p. 700, etc. 



56 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

tions to the patron saints of their vocations. The 
carpenter adores Pang, once a famous artificer in 
the province .of Shang-tung ; and the soldier 
Kwang-tae, the war-god, who was once a distin- 
guished soldier. 

Shintooism, one of the religions of Japan, is evi- 
dence of the belief of a future life among the Jap- 
anese. Among the inferior deities of the Empire 
are nearly three thousand deified men. 

Egypt was one of the very oldest of civilized 
countries. Its original settlement is not known. 
Egyptologists do not agree upon the date of the 
accession of Menes, the first known king. Mariette 
puts it at 5000 B. C. ; Brugsch at 4400; Bunsen at 
3059; Poole at 2700; Rawlinson between 2450 and 
2250. But all agree that civilization was carried 
here to a high state of perfection at a very early 
period in the history of man. There is evidence 
that from the first they believed in another life. 
Their monuments, coming down from their earliest 
ages, are records of their belief in immortality and 
the resurrection. The Book of the Dead, a copy 
of which was deposited in every mummy case, 
gave minute directions to the soul how to work its 
way to heaven, and contained specific descriptions 
of the other world and life in heaven. The mum- 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 57 

mies are witnesses of their belief even in a resur- 
rection of the body. The Egyptian lived with the 
thought of a future life constantly with him. ' ' The 
sun when it set seemed to him to die, and when it 
rose the next morning, tricking its beams, flamed 
once more in the forehead of the sky, it was a per- 
petual symbol of the resurrection." Here was also 
found the doctrine of transmigration; and Herodo- 
tus, not comprehending the idea of a resurrection, 
supposed that they embalmed the body because the 
delay was prolonged as long as the body was kept 
undecayed. 

The Assyrians and Babylonians also have great 
antiquity. Bunsen put the beginning of the 
Chaldean kingdom at 3784, but Rawlinson says 
that from the monuments alone we should not be 
compelled to place it further back than 2025. They 
worshipped several deified kings and Hea, god of 
the under- world.* 

The Zendic books date, as Haug, and approved 
by Rawlinson, thinks about 1500. The Iranians 
many years before had deified Yima. The Zend 
Avesta gives clear expression to the belief in a 

* Assur, Merodach, Nebo, Nergal god of hunting, Vul storm- 
god, Asur king of heaven, and Hea lord of hell, were the prin- 
cipal gods. Smith's History from Monuments, 10, 11. 



58 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

future existence. " Joyously go the pure souls to 
the golden throne of Ahuraand his immortal ones." 
"The soul of the righteous attains to immortality, 
but that of the wicked has everlasting punish- 
ment." Johnson, who has given these with other 
extracts, says, "Immortality in the Avesta is not 
involved in transmigration; it does not tend to ab- 
sorption in Ahura; it does not mingle man with 
the brute, nor merge him with the gods. It is dis- 
tinctly and completely personal."* 

The Greeks were very careful to discharge the 
duties which they supposed to be due from the liv- 
ing to the dead. They believed that the soul 
wandered about the world, not permitted to enter 
Hades, until the body was buried; and they provided 
for it an honorable interment. As soon as dead the 
friends put in the mouth of the corpse a coin to pay 
the ferryman across the river Styx. Honey-cake 
was given it. The body was washed, anointed 
with perfumes, crowned with flowers and dressed in 
white. In some ages various objects, as painted 
vases, mirrors and trinkets, were placed in the 
tomb.f All these testify to a belief in another life. 
The funeral customs and the faith inspiring them 

* Oriental Religions. Persia, p. 66. 
f Becker's Charicles, Burials. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 59 

came down from the very earliest times. The 
Homeric age may not have had a clear conception 
of the fact that the thinking powers survived the 
body, but there is abundant evidence that the people 
of that day believed that man did not wholly die. 
Fairbairn says, "The Homeric belief in a future 
life of the soul was a faltering, inconsistent, indis- 
tinct, yet veracious utterance of that great human 
instinct which demands for man continued exist- 
ence."* Psyche often appears as a shadow, a 
ghostly form of man, destitute of the properties of 
either mind or body, a vague, intangible some- 
thing, yet somehow continuing the life of the per- 
son. Then, it sometimes appears as self-conscious, 
.with power of appearing and speaking to the living 
either asleep or awake. Patrokles appears to 
Achilles and begs for burial. 

"Let my pale corpse the rites of burial know, 
And give me entrance to the realms below; 
Till then the spirit finds no resting place, 
But here and there the unbodied spectres chase 
The vagrant dead around the dark abode, 
Forbid to cross the irremediable flood." 

Ulysses' mother describes her own death and 
what has happened in Ithaca. Achilles rejoices to 

* Contemporary Review. 



60 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

hear of the heroism of his son. In these and other 
passages the soul embodies all the essential elements 
of man. In Hesiod the conceptions become clearer 
and more consistent. The earliest philosophers 
were materialistic and could find no solid ground 
in their philosophy for immortality, but the belief 
in it shows itself in their speculations, and some- 
times obtained clear expression. Heraclitus said, 
"When we die our souls revive and live." "The 
gods are immortal men." The tragic poets re- 
flected the common faith, and their utterances are 
not doubtful. Socrates represents both the instinct- 
ive public belief and that of the philosopher. As 
a philosopher he offers two arguments: the perfecti- 
bility of the soul, and its nature as divine. As a- 
man he talks confidently to his friends on the night 
of his death, of that higher state upon which he 
was about to enter. Plato discusses it in many 
places, and his profound convictions come out as 
an essential element of his philosophy. 

The Etruscans were the acknowledged sources 
of the augury, games, architecture and religious 
rites of the Romans. Rome, probably, obtained 
from them the whole of their early civilization. 
They lived in the northern part of Italy along the 
Po, until they drove out the Umbrians and located 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 6 1 

in Etruria. They were probably of Turanian 
origin. Historical critics have been perplexed 
about the time of the commencement of their civil- 
ization. Some have fixed it at 1400 B. C. ; others 
1000; others as late as 650. They attained con- 
siderable skill in massive architecture, painting, 
music, and statuary in bronze. They had many 
physical comforts and indulged in luxuries, enjoy- 
ing an elegance in their houses, a variety and rich- 
ness in dress, and a magnificence in their orna- 
ments, equal perhaps to any cotemporary. Their 
religious ideas were low. They had a form of 
nature worship. They practiced gloomy supersti- 
tious rites, and offered human sacrifices.* But 
they had a strong belief in a future life. They 
buried their dead in vaults and in tombs hewn out 
of rocks. The ceilings were ornamented with 
painting or sculpture. With the body were de- 
posited bronze instruments, gold ornaments, rings 
and engraved gems. On the walls of the tombs 
were inscriptions recording their hopes of another 
life, such as: " While we depart to naught our 
essence rises. " " We rise like a bird. " " We as- 
cend to our ancestors." "The soul rises like 
fire." 

* Origin of Nations. 



62 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The belief in immortality has been found among 
every people known to history since the Christian 
era. Of the Goths and Huns, those terrible ene- 
mies of the Roman empire in the days of its de- 
cline, Sir William Temple says, "It is certain that 
an opinion was fixed and general among them that 
death was but an entrance to another life." The 
Teutonic tribes thought of death as going home. 
The Celts believed in a metempsychosis. 

The North and South American Indians at the 
time of the discovery by Columbus were divided 
into a large number of distinct tribes and peoples; 
but while differing widely as to the degrees of civi- 
lization and religious practices, they all believed in 
a future existence. Charlevoix, in an oft-quoted 
remark, says, "The belief best established among 
aboriginal Americans is that of the immortality of 
the soul." Dr. Robertson says, "With respect to 
the great doctrine of religion concerning the im- 
mortality of the soul, they were more united. We 
can trace the opinion from one extremity of Amer- 
ica to the other, in some regions more faint, in 
others more developed, but nowhere unknown." 
Brinton, in his "Myths of the New World," tells us 
"that there was only one class found among the 
Indians of North and South America, and that a 



UNIVERSAL BEUEE. 63 

very small one who seemed to have no notion of a 
future life; and even they believed in charms, 
dreams, and guardian spirits." Clark says,* "The 
Mexicans said to the dying, ' Sir, awake, the light 
is approaching; the birds begin their song of wel- 
come. ' The Esquimaux looked to the land of per- 
petual day, where there are plenty of wolves. Nic- 
araugua Indians thought the soul comes out of the 
mouth in the form of a living person." The Pe- 
ruvians believed that the soul, at a time not exactly 
determined, would return to the body, beginning a 
new terrestrial life, t" Schoolcraft tells of the vam- 
pire among the Algonquins, and adds, u The belief 
in necromancy and witchcraft was universal, and 
that of transformations and metempsychosis was 
equally common, east and west of the Alleghany 
mountains. { 

The lowest and most brutal races have been 
found by more recent travelers to believe that the 
soul lives after the body dies. Among the lowest 
are the Bushmen. It has been said that they have 
no religion and no idea of a future life. L,iving- 

* Clark's Ten Great Religions, Part II, p. 139. 

fRivero and Tschuddi's Peruvian Antiquity, by Hawkes, p. 

151. 

X Iroquois, p. 144. 



64 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

stone traveled among them and became acquainted 
with their habits and modes of thought. He found 
at Zanga a Bushman's grave which "showed dis- 
tinctly that they regarded the dead as still in an- 
other state of being, for they addressed him and 
requested him not to be offended even though they 
wished to retain him a little while longer in this 
world."* He says that the tribes in South Africa 
show so little reverence and feel so little in regard 
to God and a future state that it is not surprising 
that some have supposed them entirely ignorant on 
the subject, and gives an instance of a similar mis- 
take he made with a Bushman. He questioned the 
Bak wains "as to their former knowledge of good 
and evil, of God and the future state, and they 
scouted the idea of their ever having been without 
a tolerably clear idea on all these subjects. ' ' f When 
they speak of the dead they say he has gone to the 
gods. The Barotse showed somewhat more relig- 
ious feeling than the Bechuanas, but still very 
degraded. He asked a priest at Santuru's grave 
for a relic, but was refused because Santuru ob- 
jected. At Tete he met Senhor Candido, who 
knew the language of the country perfectly, and 

* Travels, p. 183. 
f Do., 176. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 65 

whose statements, Livingstone says, may be relied 
upon. Candido told him that "all the natives of 
that region fully believe in the soul's continued 
existence apart from the body, and they visit the 
graves of relatives, making offerings of food, beer, 
etc."* Kolben, quoted by Prichard and endorsed 
by Quatrefages as above suspicion, writes of the. 
Hottentots : "That they believe in the immortality 
of the soul seems evident. 1. They offer prayer to> 
good Hottentots who have died. 2. They are 
apprehensive of the return of departed spirits. 3.. 
They believe that witches have power to restrain 

them."f 

In Western Africa are the people of Guinea, 
who are placed very low in the scale of intelli- 
gence. Oldendorp, also quoted by Prichard, says: 
"There is scarcely a nation in Guinea which 
does not believe in the immortality of the soul, 
and that after its separation from the body it has 
certain necessities, performs actions, and especi- 
ally is capable of happiness or misery. The 
negroes believe almost universally that the souls 
of good men after their separation from the body 
go to God, and the wicked to the evil spirits." J 

* Travels, p. 686. 

t Natural History of Man, Vol. II, p. 688. 

J Do., p. 705. 



66 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Purches wrote in 1625, "We asked them what 
became of the soul when the body dies. They 
made answer that when they die they know that 
they go into another world, and that therein they 
differ from the brutes." 

The Australians are exceedingly low, but 
Quatrefages says that they "believe in a kind 
of immortality of the soul, which passes success- 
ively from one body to another. But before 
finding a new abode the spirit of the dead wanders 
for a certain length of time in the forests, and the 
natives very often affirm that they have been 
seen and heard."* He says that the Tahitans 
believed in rewards and punishments after death. 
"The chiefs go to Paradise. The others go into 
Po, where they have no very decided pleasure or 
pain. But the guilty were condemned to un- 
dergo a certain number of times a scratching of 
flesh upon the bones. The sins expiated, they^ too 
were admitted to Po." f 

The Mincopies have been pronounced atheists, 
but Symes and Day have shown that they do 
worship certain deities, and believe in another 
life. u They keep lighted fires under the plat- 

* Human Species, p. 487. 
f Human Species, p. 489. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 6j 

form which bears the body of their chief, to 
appease his powerful spirit." * 

The people of Terra del Fuego did not seem to 
Darwin to have any religion, yet they blow into 
the air to keep away evil spirits. 

This review of the evidence, limited only for 
the want of space, is sufficient to prove beyond 
question that the belief in a future life is part of 
the universal faith of man. We have found it in 
the very oldest, and in the most brutal and savage, 
as well as in the most enlightened. It has ap- 
peared in all ages and conditions. It was promi- 
nent in the early dawnings of civilizations, and 
asserted itself while men were maintaining the 
fiercest struggles for a mere existence. It lingers 
even in those people who have become so stupid 
as to seem indifferent to it. The universality of 
no subjective fact can be more fully established. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FACT. 
Universal beliefs have the guarantees of our 
faculties. To discredit them sends us into Pyrrhon- 
ism. If we reject one without showing clearly and 
precisely the source of the error, we involve all the 
others. Philosophers and philosophic thinkers of 

* Human Species, p. 480. 



68 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

all ages have attached a great deal of importance to 
them. "What appears to all, that is to be be- 
lieved, whereas what is presented to individual 
minds is unworthy of belief ' ' (Heraclitus). ' ' What 
appears to all, that we affirm to be; and he who 
subverts this belief, will himself assuredly advance 
nothing more deserving of credit" (Aristotle). 
( ' The consent of all races must be regarded the law 
of nature." "About that which the nature of all 
agrees, it is necessary that it be true" (Cicero). 
"It is better to trust all than a few. For individu- 
als can be and are deceived. No one deceives all, 
and all deceives no one" (Pliny, the younger). 
"The common nature of man is neither itself void 
of truth, nor is it the erring index of the true; in 
virtue thereof all men are on certain points mutu- 
ally agreed, those only excepted who through pre- 
conceived opinions and a desire to follow them out 
consistently find themselves compelled verbally to 
dissent" (Alexander of Aphrodisias). To these 
may be added a large number of other philosophers 
of modern times. Adherence to the instinctive be- 
liefs constitutes the strength of the Scottish philos- 
ophy, and the abandonment of them the weakness 
of the German. Kant, after well-nigh wrecking all 
philosophy, was compelled to return to them. 



UNIVERSAL BEUEF. 69 

Not only philosophers, but all men, hold as true 
what has been universally approved. We have the 
aphorism: "The voice of the people is the voice of 
God." Hesiod gave utterance to the common 
judgment in the lines closing his Work and Days: 

"The word proclaimed by the concordant voice 
Of mankind fails not; for in man God speaks." 

The universal beliefs are somewhat analogous to 
instinct, and they have not unfrequently been 
called instinctive. The instinct of the animal and 
of man does not err, and on the ground of analogy 
all the instinctive beliefs must be held as certain. 

There are two kinds of universal beliefs. One 
class is universal through self-evidence and neces- 
sity. We are compelled to think them, to accept 
them, whether we will or not. The other class 
does not appear so imperiously in our conscious- 
ness, and we may throw them off. To this class 
belongs the belief in the existence of God and a 
future life. We are not guilty of absurdity in deny- 
ing the latter class, as in the former. We can 
bring proofs for the one, but not for the other. But 
as both grow spontaneously out of our nature, in 
repudiating the last we in large measure discredit 
the first. 



70 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

This proof of a future existence has a force which 
has been felt by those who have denied the doc- 
trine, and they have attempted to evade it in two 
general ways. 

First, they have tried to disprove the fact of the 
universality of the belief. The accumulated evi- 
dence has put the fact beyond question, for it is 
now known that if it is not absolutely universal, 
the few exceptions which have appeared or may 
hereafter appear are unimportant. 

Secondly, they have attempted to prove that the 
belief is not natural, but acquired. It has been said 
that it originates in the instinctive desire for life. 
For self-preservation God gave us a strong love of 
life, and this begat and nurtures the belief in a 
future life. But this desire is instinctive, and, 
accompanied by a belief, becomes a pledge of the 
fact. The desire is itself a proof of our immortality. 

A far more plausible explanation has been found 
in the dreams of the savage age. Our savage 
ancestors mistook the vivid subjective realities of 
dreams for objective facts, and when they dreamed 
of their dead friends they supposed that those 
friends really returned to them. Herbert Spencer 
proposed this theory, and Mr. Tylor has ably sup- 
ported it by facts which his extensive acquaintance 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 7 1 

with savage life furnished him. He states the 
theory in this way: "What then is this soul 
which goes and comes in sleep, trance and death? 
To the rude philosopher the question seems to be 
answered by the very evidence of the senses. 
When the sleeper awakens from dreams he believes 
he has somehow really been away, or that other 
people have come to him. As it is well known by 
experience that men's bodies do not go on these 
excursions, the natural explanation is that every 
man's living self or soul is his phantom or image, 
which can go out of his body and see and be seen 
itself in dreams. Even waking men, in broad 
day-light, see these human phantoms in what are 
called visions or hallucinations. They are further 
led to believe that the soul does not die with the 
body, but lives on after quitting it; for although a 
man may be dead and buried, his phantom figure 
continues to appear to the survivors in dreams and 
visions. That men have such unsubstantial images 
belonging to them is familiar in other ways to the 
savage philosopher, who has watched their reflec- 
tions in still water or their shadows following them 
about, fading out of sight to re-appear suddenly 
somewhere else, while sometimes for a moment he 
has seen their living breath as a faint cloud, van- 



72 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

ishing though one can feel that it is still there. 
Here, then, in few words, is the savage and bar- 
baric theory of souls, where life, mind, breath, 
shadow, reflection, dream, come together and ac- 
count for one another in some such vague confused 
way as satisfies the untaught reasoner."* As a 
confirmation of this theory he appeals to language. 
"Even among the most civilized nations language 
plainly shows its traces, as when we speak of a 
person being in an ecstacy or 'out of himself and 
4 coming back to himself,' or when the souls of the 
dead are called shades (that is, shadows) or spirits 
or ghosts (that, is breaths), terms which are relics of 
men's earliest theories of life. 1 ' f 

This theory does not have direct proof, nor can 
it be met by positive facts. It is possible that the 
belief in a future life originated in that way, and if 
man was originally a savage this is doubtless the 
real genesis of it; but then it is not shown that it 
did. On the other hand it is impossible, without 
the Bible, to prove positively that it did not. It is 
a question of fact which lies beyond the reach of 
secular history. 

The theory originates in the exigencies of a 

* Anthropology, p. 343. f Do., p. 345. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 73 

materialistic philosophy. That philosophy, to 
make good its claims, is bound to account by ex- 
perience for every idea. It has been engaged a 
long time with the task, which its opponents will 
not suffer it to forget, but there are ideas that will 
not submit to its laws. It cannot charm away, 
among others, the idea of cause; and Hume has 
shown beyond a doubt that this does not come from 
experience. While the paternity of this theory 
does not of itself condemn it, the source is sufficient 
to put us on our guard until we have time to ex- 
amine it. 

The theory assumes the fact of evolution. But 
the doctrine of evolution has not been clearly estab- 
lished. It postulates, without scientific proof, not 
merely spontaneous generation, but also the trans- 
mutability of species. It is possible that species 
may not only be variable, but also transmutable; 
but science has not a single fact of it. It assumes 
certain orders of beings as links, but it has not the 
slighest trace in fact of their existence. It assumes 
that the history of the missing links was lost in the 
missing pages, but it takes no account whatever 
of their absence from the pages where the records 
are complete. It fails to explain all the facts — for 
example, the eye, whose complexity required for its 



74 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

evolution a great many ages, yet whose perfection 
was necessary to give its possessor the slightest ad- 
vantage in the struggle for life. It fails, too, as 
many of its friends admit, to account for the mental 
and moral nature of man. The doctrine of evolu- 
tion has not attained that unquestioned authority 
that makes this theory as to the belief in a future 
life necessary. 

This theory assumes, with evolution, that man 
was originally a savage. This is far from being an 
established fact. The oldest man known to 
geology was found in Europe; but all tradition and 
all facts of science point to the interior of Asia as 
the original home of the race. Science is not com- 
petent to tell us whence we came or what was our 
primal condition. No mafa. is better authorized to 
answer in its name upon this subject than Quatre- 
fages. This is his answer with his own emphasis: 
"To those who question me upon the problem of 
our origin, I do not hesitate to answer in the name 
of science, I do not know. ' ' * Man, as he appears 
in the oldest traces of him in Egypt, Babylonia, 
and Phcenecia, is far from being a savage. The 
theory assumes therefore as a fact that which all 
accessible facts deny. Those who accept the Bible 

* Human Species, p. 12S. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 75 

have its high authority for believing that man did 
not appear on earth as a savage. 

Dreams may account for the belief in the fact of 
a future existence, but they do not account for the 
idea of a future retribution which so generally ac- 
companied it. The idea of future rewards and 
punishments grew out of our moral nature. The 
theory of dreams must be supplemented by the 
theory that man's moral nature was acquired. One 
of the most stubborn facts the doctrine of evolution 
has had to encounter, is the conscience. A theory 
that must be bolstered up by a still more doubtful 
theory, violates one of the canons of the hypothesis 
and has very little scientific value. 

The theory fails to explain, and is inconsistent 
with, the fact of the persistence of the belief long 
after the savage stage has been passed. The great 
majority in every stage of culture, from the lowest 
up to the very highest, believe in a future life. 
Centuries after a people have learned to know the 
nature of dreams and shadows, they look forward 
to an existence after death. If the dreams were the 
cause of the belief, the effect would cease with the 
cause. There must be some principle in our 
nature upon which the belief is based and even if 
we could prove an original savage state, that prin- 



y6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

ciple is necessary to account for trie origin of this 
belief. 

The theory proposes to explain the belief in the 
existence of God. It claims that the first religion 
was Animism and next Polytheism. As a matter 
of fact, the earliest religion was Monotheism, or as 
Max Miiller calls it, Henotheism. If religion 
originated in dreams, the religious nature remains 
a fact, the influence of religion in human progress 
unquestionable, and this acquired belief is proved 
to have an objective reality. Some who are willing 
to admit that religion started in Animism, believe 
that it was God's way of leading men up to a 
knowledge of himself ; and the belief in a future 
life, starting in dreams, was only the first step in 
learning the truth. But the theory is against the 
facts, and this is a sufficient answer. 

Mr. Tylor's proof from language has no force. 
All our metaphysical terms are taken from sensible 
objects. Those which have been most recently in- 
troduced, as well as the oldest, are suggested by 
physical analogies. Men had ceased to think that 
the soul had eyes before they began to talk about 
intuitions, or that it had hands before they spoke 
of apprehension. 

The effort to prove the belief acquired has failed. 



UNIVERSAL BELIEF. yy 

It is much less probable than that it is intuitive, a 
belief which comes from immediate intuitions. It 
seems to spring out of our nature and must be ac- 
cepted as true, as we do all spontaneous belief. 
Natural beliefs never deceive us. They are much 
more to be trusted than the deductions of the 
understanding. Philosophers have often erred, but 
the universal faith never. We conclude with 
Davies: 

"If then all souls both good and bad do teach, 

With general voice that souls can never die, 
'Tis not man's faltering gloss, but nature's speech, 

Which like God's oracles can never lie. 
But how can that be false which every tongue 

Of every mortal man affirms for true ? 
Which truth has in all ages stood so strong, 

That loadstone-like, all hearts it ever drew." 



CHAPTER IV. 

CONSCIENCE. 

IV /TAN'S moral nature has always been regarded 
*■** as one of the clearest indications of a future 
life. Cicero, from the standpoint of ancient 
philosophy, said, "It is something clinging to the 
mind and is an augury of a life to come. It ex- 
ists in the noblest minds and in the most exalted 
spirits." Adam Smith, as a modern philosopher, 
gave expression to the same opinion. "We are 
led to the belief in a future state, not only by the 
weakness, by the hopes and fears of human 
nature, but by the noblest and best principles 
which belong to it, by the love of virtue, and by 
the abhorrence of vice and injustice." 

The moral nature, which is called conscience, 
consists of two elements. The one is rational 
and the other is emotional. The rational is the 
apprehension of the right in its principles and 
facts. The emotional is the response of the 
sensibilities to these apprehensions. The two do 

not always exist together with equal strength. 

(78) 



CONSCIENCE. 79 

There is no feeling without an intellectual act, 
but it is conceivable that there may be intellect- 
ual acts without feeling. Those who attempt to 
reduce conscience to the emotional miss the most 
essential part of it and mistake a variable adjunct 
for the great factor. 

The rational is partly intuitive and partly 
reflective. The intuitive lays hold of the funda- 
mental principles of duty. The function of 
reason in the moral differs from that in mathe- 
matics and philosophy only in respect to the char- 
acter of the truths apprehended. In the one it 
knows immediately fundamental laws of right; 
in the other it knows immediately more general 
axioms and primary principles. The reflective 
faculties apply the laws furnished by reason to 
the various conditions of human conduct, and 
deduce other laws. As the conditions and rela- 
tions of life are more fully understood, the laws reg- 
ulating them are more clearly grasped. Casuistry 
arises, not from any darkness of the first principles, 
but from the difficulty of applying the law in 
doubtful relations. The comparative faculty ap- 
plies the rule as known to actions as understood, 
and pronounces them right or wrong. Its judg- 
ments may be mistaken when the law is badly 



80 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

apprehended or the condition of the action 
misunderstood. 

The sensibility gives a response to the law by 
a sense of obligation, and to the judgment upon 
actions by a feeling of approval or disapproval. 

The correlative of the moral nature is the moral 
law. The conscience presupposes this law as the 
eye does light or as the reason does truth. The 
law is objective, but reveals itself in our con- 
science. It is not a mere necessity of thought. 
It existed before we did, and doubtless holds in 
worlds of which we know nothing. It does not 
grow up in us, but stands ready to exercise its 
authority over us as soon as expanding reason 
is able to catch its voice. It is like reason in 
respect to truth. Reason never creates truth, but 
only apprehends it. Truth is universal, and we 
can never appropriate it so as to say 'my truth.' 
We do say 'my conscience,' speaking of our 
faculty, but never 'my moral law.' The moral 
law is simply truth embodying obligation. It is 
truth with behests upon life. It is not all truth, 
as Wollaston said, but truth of which the essen- 
tial characteristic is ought. One may have no 
impulse to obey, but in seeing the law, he must 
have an apprehension of the obligation. The 



CONSCIENCE. 8l 

intellectual factor remains as long as reason is re- 
tained, but the emotional may be lost. The law 
revealing itself intuitively to all men is what Paul 
calls the law written upon the heart. 

The fact of our moral nature cannot be denied, 
but there is a question among philosophers as to its 
origin. There are two great schools coming down, 
from the Greeks, called then the Epicurean and! 
Stoic, but known now as the Utilitarian and Intu- 
itive. The Utilitarian holds that conscience has 
been derived; the Intuitive, that it is original, or 
innate. This question is of importance in the 
proof of immortality drawn from the moral nature. 

The Utilitarian resolves the moral element in us 
into a more refined and intelligent love of pleasure. 
" Pleasure is the only good."* " Moral good and 
evil are only a voluntary conformity to a law that 
will bring pleasure and pain." t "Without pleas- 
ure, justice, obligation, duty and virtue are empty 
sounds."! I^ecky closes a review of the principles 
of this school with this remark: "We have seen 
that the distinctive characteristic of the inductive 
school of moralists is an absolute denial of the ex- 
istence of any natural or innate moral sense or 
faculty enabling us to distinguish between higher 

*Hobbes. f Locke. JBentham. 



82 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

and lower parts of our nature, revealing to us either 
the existence of a law of duty or the conduct which 
it prescribes. We have seen that the only postu- 
late of these writers is that happiness, being univer- 
sally desired, is a desirable thing; that the only 
merit they recognize in actions or feelings is their 
tendency to promote human happiness, and that the 
only motive to a virtuous act they conceive possible 
is the real or supposed happiness of the agent. 
The sanctions of morality thus constitute its obli- 
gation, and apart from them the word 'ought' 
is absolutely unmeaning."* Regarding the moral 
law as only a sublimated rule of pleasure, and the 
conscience as only a refined prudence, they were 
confronted by the question: How was the transition 
made? They have attempted to give the process. 
The earliest men obeyed their passions, but experi- 
ence taught them that there were certain immutable 
laws with which an unbridled indulgence conflicted, 
and that to secure happiness it was necessary to 
'avoid certain injurious things and to observe 
prudence. They learned, too, that some painful 
things were useful. They were taught by their 
feelings to seek some objects and avoid others, and 

* European Morals, Vol. I, p. 19. 



CONSCIENCE. 83 

to approve and blame themselves for their prudence 
or imprudence. Sympathy brought them together, 
and they obtained from each other the benefits of 
individual experience. They began at length to 
generalize and formulate principles of action, and 
thus moral maxims were formed. These were 
changed into more authoritative rules by society, 
and became laws. The long continued habit under 
the two-fold constraint of prudence and civil law, 
became constitutional and was transmitted under 
the natural law of heredity. The maxims appear 
now as innate and self-evident principles. As all 
men passed through similar experiences, the laws 
are universal. 

This historical theory itself has a history. 
Hobbes recognized injustice, ingratitude, arro- 
gance, pride, iniquity, as contrary to the eternal 
and immutable laws of nature. All knowledge of 
these laws has its origin in the sense, for there is 
no conception which u has not at first totally or by 
parts been begotten upon the organs of sense." 
Man in a savage state might adopt maxims, but 
morality prior to civil law had no existence. 
Mutual assistance is necessary to many pleasures, 
and there must be organization. L,aws are enacted 
to secure the restraint required for association and 



84 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

cooperation, and these laws were enforced by such 
penalties as to make it the individual's advantage to 
obey them. The legislators were the first moralists. 
The civil law is not co-extensive in the sphere 
of morals with the private life; and especially with 
mere thoughts and feelings the law has nothing to 
do. The penalties cannot reach a large part of 
moral conduct. The theory of Hobbes was inade- 
quate and was supplemented by a revival of the old 
doctrine of the arbitrary will of God. It was re- 
produced by the schoolman Occam, and defended 
by Crusius, Pascal, Paley, and many others. The 
motive was enlarged by the hopes of reward and 
fears of punishment in another life. Locke con- 
trasts this theory with that of Hobbes: "If a Chris- 
tian be asked why a man must keep his word, he 
will give as his reason, because God, who has the 
power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. 
But if a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, be- 
cause the public requires it; and the L,eviathan will 
punish you if you do not. ' ' * Paley, a distinguished 
expounder of the theory, says, "Virtue is doing 
good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God 
and for the sake of everlasting happiness, "f 

* Essay, i, 3. f Moral Philosophy, 7. 



CONSCIENCE. 85 

This theory made God's will neither holy nor un- 
holy, power the source of right, and demanded a 
revelation as a means of knowing God's commands. 
It was a virtual abandonment of philosophic 
methods, and was never popular with philosophers. 

Hartley made a most important contribution to 
the theory by accounting for the moral idea as it 
appears in consciousness. It is in our conscious- 
ness independent of all motives of interest. It is 
not associated with the useful. The moral is not a 
means but itself an end. Utilitarianism, both 
philosophical and theological, was compelled to ac- 
count for this fact. Hartley proposed the theory of 
association as the explanation. Things at first 
sought as means are often turned into ends. Men 
seek money as a means of acquiring gratifications, 
but at length seek it for itself and become misers. 
Men love praise for the advantage it brings, but at 
length desire posthumous praise that can never be 
of personal benefit. 

This theory required years for its operation. It 
could not explain the appearance of moral ideas in 
the child except by education. It still left the 
phenomena of self-evidence and the fact of innate- 
uess unaccounted for. 

Modern materialism found the solution in the 



86 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

law of heredity. James Mill carried the associa- 
tion back to sensation, and reduced even conscious- 
ness itself to sensation. As the seven colors of a 
rapidly revolving wheel are blended in white, so 
the lingering sensations of pleasure are blended in 
morality. Sensation is a movement of nerves, is 
physical, and, formed into habits, is transmissible. 
As the white man propagates the white color, so 
the moral sensations are communicated to offspring 
and appear as intuitions. Morality, like heroism, 
appears in races. 

Utilitarianism in all its forms falls under the 
charge of selfishness. Its advocates have resented 
it, but disclaimers are not disproofs. Bentham's 
theory of u the greatest good for the greatest num- 
ber," and Adam's Smith's "sympathy" started 
with the happiness of the individual. "By sym- 
pathetic sensibility is to be understood the propen- 
sity that a man has to derive pleasure from the 
happiness, and pain from the unhappiness of other 
sensitive beings," says Bentham.* "The idea of 
the pain of another is naturally painful. The idea 
of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable. 
In this, the unselfish part of our nature, independ- 
ently of inculcation from within, lies the founda- 

* Lecky's European Morals. 



CONSCIENCE. 87 

tion for the generation of moral feelings," says J. S. 
Mill.* The defenders of the school have struggled 
with the difficulty. Mr. Mill distinguished between 
the kinds of pleasure and made the theory respect- 
able, but only by abandoning the fundamental 
ground. He attempted to give the steps by which 
the personal feeling might become disinterested, 
but he introduced a new element to effect the trans- 
formation. The charge of selfishness stands unre- 
futed. 

This contradicts the universal judgment of man- 
kind as to the essential nature of the moral good. 
The world has made a broad distinction between the 
moral and the selfish. Language crystallizes opin- 
ions and is a better exponent of the public mind 
than formal statements. In all languages there are 
words expressive of honor, justice, truth, dis- 
interested virtue, self-sacrifice; and they convey 
widely different ideas from prudence, foresight, in- 
terest, self-love. So far as self becomes the end, so 
far any action falls in the estimate of men below 
the virtuous; The reputed hero becoming known 
as inspired only by personal ends at once loses all 
the glory of heroism. So we think to-day, and so 
has man from the earliest recorded periods thought. 

* Essays, Vol. I, p. 137. 



88 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Utilitarianism fails to account for the fact of ob- 
ligation. Bentham recognized this and admitted 
it by saying that the word "ought" should be 
erased from our vocabularies. Darwin put it upon 
persistent desire; Bain, upon external authority; 
and John Stuart Mill, upon personal feeling.* 
This is neither sound philosophy nor good morals. 

The sense of obligation according to this theory 
is but the permanent influence of authority. 
Parents taught their children the prudential 
maxims which they had learned from experience. 
Legislators enforced them by penalties. Priests, 
upon the authority of the deities, inculcated them. 
In the lapse of time the authority of personal wills 
was transferred to the law itself. 

This may explain the habit, but not the sense of 
the necessity of obedience. The sense of obligation 
.is resolved by the theory into a delusion. There is 
no difference made by it between imprudence and 
sin. As soon, therefore, as we have learned the 
true nature of the obligation, it appears in its 
original character as purely individual and relative, 
and we may repudiate it. We have the right to 
examine and reject any one of the precepts. Man 
made the right, and he can unmake it. He was 

* Calderwood. Moral Philosophy, pp. 145-152. 



CONSCIENCE. 89 

before all law, and each may act as he thinks best. 
Those who blame him are the slaves of prejudice. 
Thus utilitarianism as a moral system destroys it- 
self. 

Utilitarianism reverses the true theory of life. 
It exalts the mere feeling above the intellect as the 
governing principle. 

It has utterly failed to find a rule of life. It has 
never laid down a test of virtue or a law that an- 
swered the universal idea of the right. 

The intuitive theory is in harmony with the uni- 
versal opinion of men upon morals. Conscience 
asserts itself in consciousness as an independent 
faculty, with its distinct sphere and entitled to 
an independent place. While taste deals with 
beauty, it deals with right. While the reason 
in thought apprehends truth, in conscience it 
apprehends duty. We can know nothing out of 
consciousness, and when men get behind that 
they go beyond the range of knowledge and we 
decline to follow. 

Conscience is universal. Men everywhere have 
ideas of right and wrong.* Those tribes which 
were at one time reported as destitute of moral 

*See Janet's Theory of Morals, Chap. IV, p. 309, and 
Quatrefages, Human Species. 



90 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

conceptions have since been shown to have been 
misrepresented. It has been proven also that 
there is everywhere essential agreement upon 
fundamental moral principles. The differences, 
of which so much has been made since the days 
of Montaigne, are easily explained on ethical 
and psychological grounds. Men often excuse 
sins even when they know the right, and often 
they have difficulty in applying the principle to 
special cases. They never condemn the right 
even where they excuse the wrong. This 
agreement is a confirmation of the Intuitive 
theory and a proof that conscience is a part of 
our nature. 

The conscience, which holds its place as an 
original part of our constitution despite the 
efforts of strong men to dislodge it, reveals its 
purpose by the nature of its work. It was given 
to form character. It was not intended to be a 
guide merely to temporal happiness. Prof. 
Clifford in the monograph in which he makes un- 
blushing and blasphemous professions of atheism, 
says that we are under a law of right, and that 
we ought to be truthful and honest and chaste 
without regard to any ulterior personal ends, and 
that no matter how profitable it may be to us, we 



CONSCIENCE. 91 

ought not to practice deceit. If temporal and 
temporary happiness had been its chief end, 
conscience seems a blunder. The brute with 
only instinct makes fewer mistakes. If that was 
its end, the law of selection, according to the 
evolution scheme, became erratic and took a 
downward course; or, in conferring conscience, 
according to the theistic scheme, God appears 
to have made a bad choice of means. Instinct 
would have been a better guide. But if charac- 
ter formed here for a life hereafter is the aim, 
conscience was the only means. 

Conscience implies freedom of the will. There 
are metaphysical difficulties with which Kant's 
famous antinomies have made us all familiar. The 
necessitarian controversy, which has been carried 
on for centuries, has not been settled. There are 
apparent causes outside of the will controlling its 
volitions. Statistics reveal remarkable uniformity 
in human life, and "positive" philosophers have 
boldly predicted a time when the actions of men 
will be foretold as we now do natural phenomena. 
But many of these difficulties are in appearance 
only, and not in reality. Some are real, and we 
may not be able to meet all of them. Metaphysi- 
cians have found difficulties in physical as well as 



92 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

mental causality; but no one really doubts that he 
knows causes. So no one really doubts that his 
will is free. It is a fact of consciousness in every 
act of the will. We do not trouble ourselves with 
the possibility when we have the fact itself. The 
consciousness of freedom gives us the sense of 
responsibility. If we are not free we are not under 
obligation, and we can not be either punished or 
rewarded. We may suffer evils, but conscience 
deceives us when it tells us that we are punished. 
Thus, our nature becomes a lie. Whatever may 
be the other difficulties, they are not so great as 
that which the direct denial of the intuition of con- 
sciousness involves. The problem of explanation 
may be, as Dr. McCosh thinks, insoluble, but the 
fact itself is as certain as any fact can be. 

The freedom of the will is evidence of immor- 
tality. It stands alone among the facts of the 
world. Every other cause is under necessity; the 
will only is free. Every other power acts blindly ; 
the will only is self-determining. Everything 
else must obey laws imposed from without, and 
move inevitably to a given end; the will only has 
spontaneity. This shows the will's independence 
of nature. That which is above the range of 
natural law cannot be involved in changes pro- 



CONSCIENCE. 93 

duced by that law. Death, which is natural, cannot 
reach it. The consciousness of freedom keeps alive 
the consciousness of the distinction between mind 
and body, and begets the certainty of its own sur- 
vival of the destruction of its organ. This intui- 
tion is the data upon which rests the universal 
belief in a future life. The belief is a necessary 
inference from the intuition. 

Freedom and intelligence are the elements of 
personality. Because we have intelligence and 
freedom we are persons, and, as persons, we have 
rights. "Human personality is inviolable." Kant 
held that inviolability is involved in the very idea 
of personality. Among these rights is that of ex- 
istence. It is a right over against every other 
individual and against the State. To be deprived 
of life without having forfeited it is the greatest of 
wrongs. The right to existence is a natural right. 
It is a right which God has conferred, and in con- 
ferring it He limited himself. He cannot take 
away our existence and violate personality by 
destroying it, without an act of great injustice. 
God never does wrong, and, therefore, the soul is 
immortal. 

Conscience is related to the eternal, and in that 
relation it reads its own immortality. The law 



94 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

whose behests it must obey is higher than the laws 
of nature. We can conceive of any of these physi- 
cal laws as coming into force, of being annulled, of 
being indefinitely modified. The law of gravita- 
tion, the most general of all of them, is not a 
necessity of thought, for we can think of worlds 
where it does not exist. But we cannot think of 
the moral laws as commencing or being abrogated. 
If in imagination we stand in empty space while 
there was naught but God, we find moral law ready 
to assert itself over a free intelligence as soon as it 
would come into being. We cannot think of a 
world where it would be right to tell a falsehood. 
Not even God is above it. He cannot violate it 
without wrong. It is, therefore, an absolutely 
universal law. The conscience is the response to 
that law. It is the voice of eternal principles. The 
conscious relation to these principles is a pledge to 
the soul that it is immortal. 

Matter is also related to eternal laws. If it exists 
it must exist in space, and if it moves it must move 
in time. But the analogy fails in an essential par- 
ticular. Matter knows nothing of these relations. 
The consciousness of them gives a nobility and 
worth to its subject which does not belong to 
unconscious matter. Pascal in his own inimitable 



CONSCIENCE. 95 

way has given expression to this truth : "Man is 
a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a 
thinking reed. Even if the universe should crush 
him he would be more noble than that which killed 
him : for he knows that he dies, and he recognizes 
the advantage which the universe has over him. 
The universe knows nothing of this." We know 
the eternal law because we are akin to it. 

Conscience foreshadows a higher tribunal than 
any found in the present life. It is a part of our 
nature, but it is clothed with an authority which is 
above the human. This feature is so prominent 
as to give it its name : con and scio, knowing with. 
In conscience we know with God. Its voice is so 
authoritative and so little under our control that 
God seems to speak through it, pronouncing judg- 
ments in our hearts. 

The decisions of this tribunal are often perverted. 
Its judgments are often drowned. Its penalties 
never satisfy for crime. It tells us, therefore, of 
another tribunal to review and correct its discus- 
sions and administer the rewards which it makes 
us feel we deserve. 

If there is no other tribunal, Nature's method is 
unsuccessful. Its court fails to reach all the cases. 
Its executioner's arm may be paralyzed and his 



96 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

voice stilled. The worse trie criminal, the greater 
the impunity; while the man who strives to live vir- 
tuously is lashed and scourged for his smaller of- 
fenses. If death ends all, conscience loses its chief 
significance and becomes a troublesome factor, 
which for the greatest peace of mind we must 
restrain within moderate limits. 

Conscience reveals to us our moral defects. It 
places before us an ideal character and urges us 
up toward it. But it testifies that after our most 
earnest efforts we fall very far below perfection. 
It declares that this imperfection, not like that in 
knowledge or physical strength, is guilt. The 
consciousness of imperfection and guilt is univer- 
sal. Men in all ages have had some means by 
which they sought to propitiate the offended 
Deity. Human sacrifices, offered in so many 
countries and extending down even into the 
Christian era in Rome, testify to the deep sense of 
sin in the human heart. The growth of civiliza- 
tion taught men increasingly better methods; 
Christianity points to the sacrifice on Calvary; but 
nothing has removed the sense of guilt. Philoso- 
phy that taught that sin is only a sense of imper- 
fection necessary in the process of evolution, found 
no response in the heart. We are so conscious of 



CONSCIENCE. 97 

guilt that we read with pitying but sympathetic 
emotions of the altars of the prehistoric age so 
often red with human blood. Life, as a school 
fitting us for another stage of being, has a rational 
explanation. But if these high ideals and lofty 
aspirations are to perish in the grave, and this 
sense of guilt is without eternal significance, why 
have they been given us? Why reveal to us a 
character so far above attainment? Why lash us 
with a sense of guilt when we are only imperfect? 
Possibly these utterances of conscience have ele- 
vated the race, but they have involved immense 
losses in feeling to the individual. If the race only 
is benefited, instinct would have accomplished the 
same end, and the wounded spirits which con- 
science creates could have been avoided. If the 
individual is not immortal, the race itself must 
perish, and the elevation of the race only post- 
pones, but by no means relieves the difficulty. 
Without a future life where the ideal may be 
realized, life is a mystery, and it may well be 
asked — Is life worth living? 

Conscience points in so many ways to a future 
life, that when it is awake it seems to bear 'imme- 
diate testimony. It is not the criminal made sen- 
sible of his crimes who has doubts about immortal- 
5 



98 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

ity, but it is the easy-going, respectable, moral 
man who is skeptical. As conscience is soothed we 
lose our sense of the relation to the eternal world, 
forget the eternal tribunal, and sink into indiffer- 
ence; but when some sin has aroused it and it has 
resumed its sceptre, we know we are immortal. 
We see, as by intuition, that personal character 
cannot perish in a grave. 



CHAPTER V. 

INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 

TF there is no future life, all the ends of our exist- 
** ence must be met in our present life. We need 
no knowledge beyond that which is useful for our 
physical and social spheres. But the range of the 
mind is far wider than simply practical ends require. 
All our higher knowledge has only a remote bear- 
ing upon utility. We know more of astronomy 
than is needed for navigation, of geology than can 
be employed in mineralogy, and of mathematics 
than can be used in mechanics. If our intellectual 
powers have no higher purposes than the brief 
period of life on earth requires, they seem to be an 
unnecessary expenditure of means. The end could 
have been accomplished in a much simpler way. 
The bee builds her cell according to principles she 
does not understand. The bird finds its way uner- 
ringly through the pathless air. The horse will 
work his course in a direct line where man would 
be lost. Some one has said, "If this life is all, the 
human mind is like a huge engine in a fishing 
craft." 

(99) 



IOO EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The mind is formed for knowing truth for its 
own sake, and the truth we learn here subserves its 
highest end in developing the mental powers. De- 
velopment, and thus preparation for grasping 
higher truth hereafter, seems to be the highest and 
best mental attainment possible to us here. The 
scientific man is intentionally ignorant of a great 
many things that he may busy himself in seeking 
other things. What he wants is the activity for 
the sake of enlarging his powers. Aristotle said, 
"The end of philosophy is not knowledge, but the 
energy employed about knowledge." Lessing's 
saying in regard to search after truth is well known. 
Mere potency is worthless. The philosophic in- 
stinct, driving us onward to increasing power that 
is to perish in the grave, is absolutely unmeaning. 
The development is purely individual, and if the 
individual is annihilated all that is lost. The rest- 
less effort after self-improvement incidentally 
brings out much truth for the benefit of the race, 
but the result is not proportionate to the outlay of 
energy. There is an immense waste. The thought 
of annihilation leaves us with a deep mystery. 
But if the mind fits itself by its present activity foi 
fruitful labor in another life, the scheme of Provi- 
dence seems wise and beneficent 



INTELLECTUAL POWERS. IOI 

The field of knowledge is immeasurable. No one 
mind can compass all that is known to men. New 
fields are being opened, and each field stretches out 
indefinitely. To stand anions the first in an}' de- 
partment of science it is necessary that one be a 
specialist. Two centuries ago a brilliant genius 
like Leibnitz might be a master of jurisprudence, a 
rival of Newton in mathematics, an equal of Locke 
in philosophy, and a great controversalist in the- 
ology; but the day has passed when one man can 
be an authority in more than one science. What 
is known by the greatest is within the range of 
human powers, but life is much too short to learn 
all. Several thousand years would be necessary to 
read even the books of some of the larger libraries. 
The past is offering treasures of vast extent in his- 
tory and geology. The future has its possibilities 
for every science. God is a subject for infinite 
study. We know enough to create an intense de- 
sire to know more of His character and works, but 
eternity will not reveal the whole to us. The work 
of the life time of some men may seem great when 
compared with that of other men, but it is exceed- 
ing little compared with what one would like to do. 
Men are great as measured among themselves, but 
they are the veriest pigmies, the greatest of them, 



102 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

when measured with the expanse of truth which 
lies about us. Can it be believed that all we shall 
ever know are the few fragments we have been able 
to pick up during the leisure moments afforded 
amid the struggles to preserve life ? 

The brute knows very little more than is neces- 
sary to preserve its life and perpetuate its race. 
Those capable of domestication may be taught 
enough to make them efficient servants of men. 
All beyond that is to the lower animals non-existent. 
Nature shows its kindness in withholding from 
them any intimations of knowledge above their 
reach. But man, the noblest of creatures, and in 
many respects Nature's favorite, is exalted above 
the beasts only to be tantalized if there is no future 
life. He is shown alluring prospects, but only to 
be mocked. It had been very much kinder to have 
kept his conceptions within the range of that which 
is attainable. He could have met all the ends of 
life with mental powers only a little above the higher 
order of animal intelligence, and greater are not 
only not needed but make him unhappy. If it had 
been the purpose of Nature to make him the object 
of cruelty, with so many resources at command, 
why did it not make him more miserable ? What 
creature in obeying its natural impulses and com- 



INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 103 

plying with the laws of its nature brings upon it- 
self unnecessary pain? In seeking truth, and in 
developing mental powers, there is obedience to 
innate impulse and conformity to natural law, but 
the reward is pain. If the present is the only life, 
Nature has been not only unwise in the choice of 
means, but also unkind to her greatest child. 

It is much more reasonable to believe that these- 
capacities, in common with all the other powers of 
our nature, are given for a wise end and reveal' 
to us God's purpose. Our appetite and the power 
of digestion show that we were intended to take 
food. The social instinct and the idea of justice 
show us that we were made for society. Our re- 
ligious feelings show us that we were created for 
worship. Obedience to these instincts has elevated 
men; disobedience has always ended in degradation. 
The hermit withdrawing from society and denying 
himself proper nourishment, if he escaped idiocy, 
became a mere caricature of man. Forced celibacy 
has resulted in great evils to the individual and 
society. Even if religion be regarded as a super- 
stition, it must be admitted that when the people 
have repudiated it they have always paid a terrible 
penalty. If these great mental capacities are not 
exceptions to the other parts of our nature, they 



104 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

were given us for another life, where we may con- 
tinue our acquisitions of truth. 

The imagination gives intimations of a wider 
sphere than the world, and thus, in some degree, 
the promise of another life. It gilds life, clothing 
in beauty the homely affairs of every-day experi- 
ence, and imparts variety to what would otherwise 
be most wearisome monotony. It widens to us the 
realm of the actual. The poet often proves the 
forerunner of the philosopher. It creates new 
forms higher than any found in nature. The crea- 
tions of fiction and poetry and sculpture have made 
many additions to the beauty of the world. It 
catches visions of brighter and purer things than 
any that have been realized in the things about us. 
It serves, then, a most valuable purpose in our 
present life. But it has higher ends. The world 
is too narrow for the exhibition of the possible, and 
through the imagination God has enlarged our 
horizon, and thus given us a pledge of a higher 
sphere than that of the earth. He lifts us up that 
we may have gleams of that which will be enjoyed 
hereafter. As ultimate, the world is far from being 
the best possible, and our imagination only enables 
us to realize its imperfections more fully; but as a 
place of training for another life, with imagination 



INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 105 

to create ideals, it is admirably adapted to its ends. 
The use in multiplying the beauties of the world 
and making life happier, therefore, is not the sole 
end of the imagination. That it meets well a 
lower, is no proof whatever that it was not intended 
also for a higher purpose. But more, if these crea- 
tions of the imagination, the pure ideals, are never 
attained, we are the sport of pure delusions, and 
we are enriched only by false promises. It had 
been better for us if the range had been more 
limited. The peasant would have lived contented 
and happy in his mountain hut, but having seen 
the splendor of a great metropolis becomes dissatis- 
fied. It would have been better for him never to 
have wandered beyond the mountain gorge. If 
there is no other life, it would have been better if 
imagination had been granted power only to touch 
with her weird fingers the rougher things of the 
world, but not to give any visions of an existence 
better than the present. 

Memory is one of the most useful of our facul- 
ties. Without it the action of the others would 
be either impossible or almost worthless. Even 
the brute has memory. But the memory of man 
is much greater than is necessary for the purposes 
of the present life of the individual or the interest 



106 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

of the race. It is not improbable that nothing is 
forgotten. * A great many instances are recorded 
where the past that seemed wholly effaced was re- 
called. It has occurred in the life of all of us that 
things of which we had not thought for years sud- 
denly recurred to us. We have often tried, at the 
suggestion of friends, to recollect circumstances 
and were unable to find the slightest trace in mem- 
ory, but afterwards they flashed with great vividness 
upon us. The remarkable case of the German 
servant girl as related by Coleridge is frequently 
cited, and is beyond doubt authentic. During the 
delirium of disease this girl, who was illiterate, re- 
peated L,atin, Greek and Hebrew sentences. Of 
the Hebrew, only a small part could be traced to 
the Bible; the remainder seemed to be Rabbinical. 
A young physician became deeply interested and 
looked up her past life, and learned that she had 
been for a time a servant to a Protestant minister, 
whose habit it was to walk up and down a hall 
opening into the kitchen, reading aloud his favor- 
ite books. He was a fine Latin and Greek scholar, 
and especially fond of Hebrew. Among his books 

* Sully says, "We never can be sure that reproduction is im- 
possible, even in cases that seemed beyond recollection." Out- 
lines of Psychology, p. 2S1. 



INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 107 

were found a collection of Rabbinical writings and 
several Latin and Greek Church fathers. The girl 
had heard repeatedly, perhaps, the same passages, 
not a word of which she ever understood, and then 
in the delirium of fever reproduced them by the 
memory alone of unmeaning sounds. 

The case of Comtesse Laval is given by Lord 
Monboddo, and quoted by Sir William Hamilton. 
The Comtesse during sleep had been observed by 
the servants to speak in a language which none of 
them understood. Once she was attended by a 
nurse from Brittany, who recognized her own dia- 
lect. The Comtesse could not understand the lan- 
guage when awake. She had been born in that 
province, and had been nursed during infancy in a 
family where it was used. She had never been 
able consciously to speak it, yet in her dreams she 
employed it. 

It has been often observed that persons in their 
last illness return to the language of childhood, the 
use of which had been long discontinued. 

It is generally reported that the whole of the past 
life flashes upon the drowning. 

We are warranted in saying, though it is not 
fully proved, that nothing is ever forgotten; the 
memory has powers much beyond the needs of the 



108 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

present life, and therefore requires a future life as 
a sufficient explanation of their purpose. 

The mind in none of its faculties attains in any 
case its highest possible development. The great- 
est mind has felt when compelled to lay down its 
work that that work was really only begun. In 
everything else in the world possibilities, so far as 
we can know them, are in some instances realized. 
Many a tree is blasted in the bud, but some come 
to perfection. Many an animal remains a dwarf, 
but some reach their highest type. The mind 
alone must always stop on the threshhold of what 
opens before it as its true destiny. The doctrine 
of final causes, upon which nature carries on all her 
works, requires for us another life. 

The argument in this chapter has been teleologi- 
cal — the destiny of the mind as revealed by ends 
manifested in its powers. But these powers give 
intimations of a future life through their own nature 
without regard to ends. If we can see clearly that 
the mind is a distinct essence from the body, we 
have no difficulty in believing that it lives after the 
body dies. Whatever indicates a difference of 
essence, indicates a future life. 

The effort to reduce all our knowledge to sensa- 
tion has failed. If it had succeeded, or shall in the 



INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 109 

future become successful, it will not necessarily 
follow that the soul is merely physical. L,ocke, the 
father of modern empiricism, and Condillac, his 
eminent but radical disciple, as well as many other 
sensualistic philosophers, have believed in the im- 
mortality of the soul. But until all thought is 
reduced to sensation, we must hold the mind as 
something other than the body. 

There is a close relation between the mind and 
the brain. For every brain-movement there is 
thought- movement, and whatever affects the brain 
affects also the mind. This would be true if the 
mind were the product of the brain; and it would 
be equally true if the brain were only the organ of 
the mind. The brain-movement is not thought. 
The impossibility of reducing them to the same 
terms has been admitted by materialists, and this 
impossibility shows that whatever may be the rela- 
tion between them, that which thinks is not the 
molecules of the brain which move. 

Memory has a brain organ, and when it is dis- 
eased memory is affected. But memory is psychi- 
cal, and materialists have found no physical basis 
for it. It is the power of reproducing the past by 
its own innate energies, without the help of any 
picture on the brain. There is no trace of any 



no evidence: of a future life. 

physical modification whatever which memory 
employs. The imagination has also its brain 
organ, and it draws its material from sensible ob- 
jects, but it is so removed from mechanical laws 
that its productions are called creations. It creates 
ideals that matter never realizes, and if it is mater- 
ial matter transcends itself. Both memory and 
imagination are under the control of the will. The 
origin of activity is in the mind — the determination 
to recall or depict is before the recollection or cre- 
ation. The materialistic theory must start with the 
acts of recollection and of imagination as sponta- 
neous molecular movements, or postulate some self- 
conscious molecule which rules over all the others. 
But nobody knows anything of this great autocrat. 
There are ideas that have stubbornly refused to 
be reduced to sensation. They are the conditions 
of experience. Without them sensation would be 
unmeaning. They gather up the diversity into 
unity. One is substance, another is cause, and a 
third is personal identity. The idea of substance 
does not come through sensation, because the senses 
give only phenomena. The idea of cause cannot 
originate in the sense, for sense gives only succes- 
sion. Personal identity does not, for in every sensa- 
tion there is the fact that it is my sensation, and the 
subject is pre-supposed. How can a sensation beget 



INTELLECTUAL POWERS. Ill 

the idea of me? — for until felt it is not a sensation, 
and, if felt, who feels it? The ideas of infinity, 
of space and of time, are also supersensible. In- 
finity cannot come into finite experience. Beauty 
is seen through the sensible form, but it is some- 
thing different from that which falls under the eye 
and ear. The right is connected with action, but 
the senses do not grasp it. 

If the body has these intellectual powers, two 
wholly distinct and opposite classes of properties 
belong to the same substance. If we reject the 
distinction between mind and matter, we must, on 
the ground of all analogy, end with a substance 
behind both mental and physical phenomena of 
which they are the manifestations. The efforts to 
reduce materialistic phenomena to mind or ideal- 
ism, and mental phenomena to matter or material- 
ism, have thus far accomplished so little that we 
feel sure they will always fail. If mind is a distinct 
substance, or even a modification distinct from the 
body, there is no evidence that it ceases to exist 
when the body dies. This much it seems necessary 
to say here in regard to the nature of the mind, but 
the subject will come up for a fuller discussion in 
subsequent chapters. We feel authorized to draw 
the conclusion that the mental powers, both by 
their purpose and nature, promise us another life. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SENSIBILITIES. 

HPHE Sensibility is dependent upon the Intellect. 
-*- It is the reaction of the mind upon the objects 
apprehended. It is purely psychical. It is the 
capacity of pleasurable or painful response to 
everything brought within consciousness. As the 
body is drawn towards that which is in harmony 
with it and repelled by that which is injurious, so 
the mind is drawn towards that which is in har- 
mony with its nature and repelled by that which is 
not congenial. The feelings are of different de- 
grees of intensity. If the idea is stronger in con- 
sciousness, our attention is directed to it and we 
speak of the intellectual act; but if the feeling is 
stronger, we almost overlook the intellectual factor, 
and speak of the emotion. Both are essential 
parts of the mind, and the one may reveal our 
nature and destiny as well as the other. They are 
guides in our present life, and they are pledges of 
a life to come. 

There is evidence of a future life in the innate 
desire for it. 

(112) 



SENSIBILITIES. 113 

Desires may be classified as natural and ac- 
quired. A natural desire is a promise from Nature. 
A natural impulse may be perverted, and appear 
under a new form. The desire for food may be 
changed into gluttony. By persistent effort that 
which was at first repulsive may be converted into, 
an object of intense craving; as, for example, to- 
bacco and whisky. But for every desire there is. 
a corresponding object. We may not be able to 
secure the gratification, but that which, if within, 
reach, would satisfy, is somewhere in existence.. 
To this law there is not a single known exception. 

The universal desire for a future life implies the 
fact of that life. If there are any exceptions 
whatever to the universality of this desire, the 
number is too small to be taken into account. 
Men may not believe it, but still they desire it. 
They may fear the punishment which that life 
may bring, but yet they desire the life. The be- 
lief found everywhere is nurtured in some degree 
by the desire. 

The desire is original. It is not the outgrowth 
of an instinctive love of a life which cannot be 
maintained in this world, and therefore turns to 
the future. The love of life and the consequent 
shrinking from death are Nature's means for self- 



114 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

preservation. Without it we would be reckless, 
and a majority of individuals would be carried off 
prematurely. The race itself would probably be- 
come extinct. We understand God's purpose in 
endowing us with this clinging to our physical ex- 
istence. The desire for another life may seem to 
be only a necessary consequence of this instinct. 
But this is not the true origin of it. We share the 
instinctive love of life with the brutes. We, not 
they, desire another life. The brute does not 
know what death is, and does not shrink from it 
because he is afraid of extinction but by a mere 
law that works through him. The highest ani- 
mal intelligence does not reach a fact as high as 
the nature of death. That law is sufficient to 
guard individuals from unnecessary exposure and 
to preserve the animal species. Within historic 
periods only two or three species have disappeared. 
That law would have been sufficient to accomplish 
our self-preservation, and there was no need of 
supplementing it with the desire of another life. 
Just so far as the belief in a future life is opera- 
tive, it counteracts the instinctive desire for the 
present life. When men look with perfect confi- 
dence to existence beyond the grave, they are less 
concerned about holding on to a life so full of ills 



SENSIBILITIES. 115 

as is the present. With intelligence the thought 
of the possibility of another life was unavoidable, 
and with the belief in the possibility the desire 
was inevitable. But the desire has no corrective. 
We are left to cherish it, and Nature therefore is 
the responsible author. Even if it were not orig- 
inal, it is natural, growing necessarily out of nat- 
ural powers, and is therefore Nature's gift and 
Nature's pledge. But the case is stronger. The 
desire grows out of an intuition. The belief is in- 
stinctive, and the desire is primitive. They were 
implanted by the Creator, and if there is no future 
life He disappoints us. 

For every natural desire there is a corresponding 
object. Though all men who desire wealth do not 
obtain it, there is wealth, and the gratification of 
the desire is not an absolute impossibility. It is so 
with every other natural desire. But if there is no 
future life, here is one desire which is universal but 
cannot possibly be met. This is the only excep- 
tion. It may be thought that the desire, though 
disappointed, may accomplish good. The desire 
for wealth is a benefit to those who never obtain it, 
because it makes them prudent and active, and the 
benefit justifies the universal principle. So the 
desire for immortality makes us more careful as to 



Il6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

character, and the good realized from it more than 
compensates for the disappointment. This is true, 
but nowhere else does Nature allure us by an abso- 
lutely impossible end. In regard to wealth the 
promise is conditional, and the object under proper 
conditions is secured. In regard to a future life, if 
there is none, Nature promises unconditionally the 
impossible. We are prompted to seek a better 
character by a false promise. A holy God cannot 
use deceit and falsehoods as means to His ends. He 
never promises, by word or act, what cannot, under 
any circumstances whatever, be granted. No 
matter whether original or secondary, the desire 
belongs to our constitution, and in it we have God's 
promise of another life — at least as a possibility to 
some. There is, therefore, a future life. There is 
no escape from this conclusion except in atheism. 

The desire for wealth is a reflection of the desire 
for immortality. Though the desire for riches is 
general, it is not in the strictest sense original. It 
is the perversion of another desire. Wealth is the 
accumulation of the means of gratification. It is 
intended to meet future wants. Its end is pros- 
pective. It is the fruit of labor saved for subse- 
quent enjoyment. It brings with it power, and 
thus it is related to the innate love of power. Upon 



SENSIBILITIES. 117 

these two principles — the provision for the future 
and love of power — the love of wealth is based. 

Much greater wealth is desired than is needed to 
meet the wants of our physical nature, or to provide 
for the capacity for enjoyment. Human pleasures 
are limited. Beyond the gratification of these 
wants, wealth has no other purpose than to give us 
a sense of power. Men are not satisfied with it as a 
means of physical enjoyment. They pile up riches 
beyond any possible personal use. No man, except 
as a means of other accumulations, is able to em- 
ploy a million dollars, but they seek hundreds of 
millions. They want it for the power it brings. 
But except so far as is necessary for the protection 
of self and rights, why is power wanted? The 
answer is found in the love of personal being. 
What we own is in some sense a part of ourselves. 
We set our mark on it, and in some way it reflects 
ourselves. It is a product of our labor, and em- 
bodies so much of our strength. It is ours over 
against others. Thus our wealth becomes a re- 
flection of self and seems to be an expansion of our 
personal being. Increasing our power, it also in- 
tensifies our self-consciousness. It gives us a feel- 
ing of superiority over the world and of our indi- 
viduality. That this is related to the desire and 



Il8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

faith in a future life is seen in this fact, that with 
material prosperity there is, unless counteracted by 
a quickened religious life, a weakened sense of 
immortality. The extension of self here abates for 
the time the desire for the life hereafter. The de- 
sire for unnecessary wealth seems to be, then, a 
perversion of the desire of a future life. 

The principles upon which this conclusion is 
based have many facts to illustrate and confirm 
them. Men generally with the accumulation of 
wealth manifest an increased self-consciousness. 
They show by their bearing a feeling of superiority, 
and the world acknowledges it by paying them 
deference. That feeling may not be offensively dis- 
played, but whenever circumstances favor it the dis- 
covery is made. We use this feeling of self-respect 
from possessions as a means of elevating the lower 
classes. We encourage them to make accumula- 
tions, and in order to assist them we establish sav- 
ings banks. The spirit of the slave denied all 
possessions is always mean ; but even the slave who 
has been permitted to lay up a little sum, as was 
often seen among the negro slaves, rises above that 
meanness. But at the same time, with this grow- 
ing self-respect from unneeded wealth, there is a 
diminishing interest in the reality of a life after 



SENSIBILITIES. 119 

death. Those who love wealth most have least 
concern in regard to a future world. Solomon in 
Ecclesiastes makes numerous references to this fact. 
Christ speaks of it several times. "It is easier for 
a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than 
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." The young man "went away sorrowful, 
because he had great possessions." The rich man 
who lifted up his eyes in hell seems to have had no 
vice except callousness. Paul also speaks of it 
frequently, warning men lest riches u drown them 
in perdition." Men who have other means of 
deepening and enlarging the sense of individuality 
are rarely covetous. Men of learning or eminence 
are not often avaricious. Spiritually minded men 
to whom heaven is a certainty are not concerned 
about great accumulations. Wealth despiritualizes. 
" Ye cannot serve God and mammon." u The love 
of money is the root of all evil." Periods of ad- 
versity are not periods of skepticism. Great relig- 
ious awakenings follow general financial depres- 
sions. Our skepticism to-day grows out of our 
great material prosperity. Because wealth is not 
the natural end of the desire which prompts its 
accumulation, it never satisfies. The desire for im- 
mortality diverted to another object and losing 



120 evidence: of a future life. 

itself in it goes on intensifying itself, and therefore 
the more men get the more they want. 

The inordinate desire for fame is also a per- 
verted desire for a future life. The love of praise 
is natural. It grows out of our desire for personal 
worthiness. Praise is an evidence of that worthi- 
ness. But the desire for esteem is susceptible of 
abuse in two directions. It may be sought be- 
cause of its advantage, and thus a noble sentiment 
is perverted into a selfish one. It is more gener- 
ally sought to gratify the love of personal being. 
Distinction gives a sense of importance — makes 
one more fully conscious of self. It lifts us up 
above the masses, and sets us out more clearly in 
our individuality. But present eminence never 
satisfies. Men want other portions and other 
honors. Daniel Webster would have added, noth- 
ing to his eminence if he had become President; 
but not satisfied with the glory of being the great 
American orator, he sought the Presidency with 
an avidity that approximated weakness. Life is 
too short to satisfy the craving, and men court a 
fame that will live after them. They suffer 
obscurity and poverty and a thousand ills to 
win a posthumous name. 

If death is the annihilation of personality, what 



SENSIBILITIES. 121 

does it matter whether or not there be any remem- 
brance of us? Why should there be concern as to 
what men think or say of us after we are dead? 
What is fame? Is it not, as some one has said, a 
breath? What is it worth to those who exist not? 
Hannibal's fame has been satirized : 

"Go climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool, 
To please the boys and be a theme at school." 

' If Luther or Washington live only in name, what 
benefit is loving remembrance to mere nothingness? 
But absurd as is the thought of any possible rela- 
tion of praise to an absolute blank, by an instinct- 
ive impulse all men want to be remembered. 

"So strong the zeal to immortalize himself 

Beats in the breast of man, that even a few, 
Few transient years, won from the ab}<ss abhorred 
Of blank oblivion, seem a glorious prize, 
And even to a clown." 

Shakespeare has given expression to the same 
fact as a universal characteristic. 

"To go down to the pit, 
And moulder into dust among vile worms, 
And leave no whispering of a name on earth — 
Such thought was cold about the heart and 
Chilled the blood. Who could endure it ? Who could choose 
Without a struggle to be swept away 
From all remembrance, and have no part with living men ?" 



122 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The desire for fame testifies to the fact of a future 
life in the same way that the desire for wealth does. 
Both of them grow out of the desire for the con- 
sciousness of individuality, both of them are insat- 
iable, and both of them are perverted desires for 
immortality. The love of post-mortem praise testi- 
fies in another and stronger way. No one wants 
to be forgotten, because no one wants to be annihi- 
lated, or believes that he will be. Addison sums 
up the argument thus: 

"Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality ? 
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror 
Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul 
Back on itself and startles at destruction ? 
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 
'Tis heaven itself that points out a hereafter 
And intimates eternity to man." 

The affections, another class of feelings, give still 
further pledges of a future life. 

Human love in some of its forms is in certain 
degrees like affection among brutes. Both men 
and brutes have affection for offspring. The end of 
this love is the perpetuation of the species. Where 
the care of the mother is not needed in infancy, as 
in the case of fishes, it does not exist. Where the 



SENSIBILITIES. 123 

young can not provide for themselves there is often 
a passionate fondness in the parent. Where the 
care of both parents is needed, as in many birds, it 
is found in both. But as soon as the young are 
able to take care of themselves, the parents become 
indifferent and cast them off. The end of Nature 
has been accomplished, and the parents forget. 
The love of the human parent has in part the same 
end. The mother's fondness for her babe secures to 
it the tenderest care, the best instruction, and the 
surest guarantee of preservation. That love also 
makes the care and labor for the child a pleasant 
duty. But the preservation of the race is not the 
sole end. The love lives on when the attention 
and care are no longer needed. The mother does 
not cease to love her child after it has left her home 
and is able to take care of itself. She never ceases 
to love it. What end does this continued love sub- 
serve ? 

We are mutually dependent. Solitary life, if 
not impossible, is barren. Love of society brings 
men together, and thus they are made to help each 
other. Love renders society happy and gives it 
efficiency. Where animals need each other, they 
are by instinct gregarious. They obey the instinct 
without knowing the end. This mutual assist- 



124 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

ance is one aim of the social instinct in man, but 
this is not the sole purpose. Love lives after asso- 
ciation has ended. Great oceans separate homes 
and the family will no more be brought together, 
but love continues. Love spans death itself. The 
pain of bereavement diminishes; the anguish, that 
paralyzed effort at first, passes away; but love itself 
remains. The thoughts as the evening shades 
come on fly beyond the golden gate in the west to 
the home where the loved one has gone. 

The memory of the dying is frequently busy 
with thoughts of those long since dead. The old 
man in the delirium of disease talks lovingly of 
the companions of his youth and early manhood. 
Affection reaching out to those who have crossed 
over the river, wonders if they retain their love 
for us and asks with Mrs. Hemans: 

" Tell us, thou bird of solemu strain, 
Can those who have loved forget ? 
We call and they answer not again ; 
Do they love — do they love us yet? " 

The love that goes beyond the grave, defying 
separation and death, has existed in all ages. 
The splendid monuments erected to their memory, 
the inscriptions upon tombs, and various other 
mementoes, bear witness to it in the early dawn 



SENSIBILITIES. 1 25 

of history. The Egyptian mummies, the Chinese 
ancestral shrines, the American mounds, testify to 
that affection down through the ages. The 
rudest savages as well as the most cultivated 
races cherish the love for their dead. It is there- 
fore a natural affection. It subserves no purpose 
in life, and if it does not point to a future life, 
what is its meaning? But clearer than any logic, 
and above all logic, it is in itself a testimony. It 
bears in itself by instinct, or intuition, or inner 
revelation, or whatever one may be pleased to call 
it, the evidence that rational love can never 
perish. 

Among the affections we find also love for God, 
who is an infinite person. There is not much 
need for such a love in the narrow limits of life. 
Mere utilitarianism can not satisfactorily account 
for it. The attempted explanation is that it in- 
fluences character. But if life here is all of 
existence, there is not much need of character. 
Good health is better than character in the merely 
mortal. The work of to-day has its full fruits 
to-morrow, and so each succeeding day. If it all 
does not end in naught, there must be a future life. 

If this love of God was a natural product and 
intended solely for earth, we should have found in 



126 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

this, as in other purely natural instincts, uniform- 
ity of results. As a matter of fact all men have the 
faculty, but the great majority do not actually ex- 
ercise it. Paul said the natural heart is at enmity 
with God. The history of the world confirms the 
judgment of the Apostle. Men have feared and 
shrunk from God. The great body of the world 
had forgotten the one God, and not being able to do 
without religion, had fallen into polytheism. This 
is inexplicable on the ground of pure naturalism, 
but is in complete harmony with that religion 
which teaches a fall of man and a future life. 

The love of God has here no sufficient scope. 
The most devout come far short of their desire. In 
their best service there is imperfection, and in their 
deepest devotion a consciousness of falling below 
the demand. An infinite God deserves infinite 
praise and love, and another life is needed to perfect 
these affections. There is a capability of the 
indefinite expansion of our affections, and another 
life is needed to complete that which is here only 
happily begun. If there is any worth in character 
at all, love toward God is the noblest and best thing. 
We intuitively pronounce it the best. It is irra- 
tional to think otherwise. But if there is no future 
life, Nature's highest, noblest, best work perishes in 



SENSIBILITIES. 127 

its very beginning. Its grand promise turns out a 
failure. The noblest and worthiest aspirations are 
awakened, but only to be blasted. The success 
which marks Nature's work everywhere else forbids 
us to accept this conclusion. The capacity to love 
God is a proof of the existence of a God to be loved, 
and a perfect God would not leave so grand a 
scheme to fail. With or without the thought of 
God, the affections point clearly to a future life. 



T 



CHAPTER VII. 

CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 
HB world does not meet the promises contained 
in its constitution. It has capabilities that are 
not developed, better possibilities than are real- 
ized. Many things were left intentionally imper- 
fect, that man might find his home a school for 
self-discipline and self-development, but there are 
many imperfections and evils which are not needed 
for this purpose. The greatest failure is man. 
He has fallen much below what seems the mani- 
fest purpose of his Maker. He is made for one 
end, but he reaches another. A few. individuals 
rise up above the race towards the ideal of life, but 
even they are conscious of great imperfections, 
while the masses are perverted from the higher 
aims of existence. These are dark facts from any 
point of view. No satisfactory theodicy has yet 
been found. But if there is no future life the 
darkness is greatly intensified, and pessimism ap- 
pears the true philosophy. We must, on that sup- 
position, ascribe the world either to a force which 

works blindly and is unable to carry out what we 

(128) 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 29 

mistake for purposes, or to a fickle Deity, who 
changed His plan in the midst of His work and 
left the world an orphan. 

Happiness. — We were created for happiness. 
There are many things provided for our comfort. 
The colors blending in beautiful harmony delight 
the eye; the concord and cadence of sweet sounds, 
through the manifold forms of tone please the ear;, 
the delicious flavors and fragrances gratify the 
taste and smelling. There are domestic, social, 
and intellectual pleasures — something in every re- 
lation and at every turn to make us happy. There 
is pleasure attached to the activities necessary to 
preserve life. The young have buoyant spirits, 
bright hopes, high aspirations and lively passions, 
making life brilliant and gay. Passing years tone 
down the exuberance of spirits, but middle life has 
its duties that furnish an ample compensation. 
Old age has its weaknesses, but also its peculiar 
joys. Pains beyond a certain degree are lost in 
unconsciousness, and sorrows after a while become 
sweet memories. 

It is true that the world has its discomforts, but 

it has also its provisions against them. There are 

diseases, but there are remedies and safeguards. 

There are bereavements, but there are sympathies 
6* 



130 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

that afford a solace, and time, the sovereign healer, 
at length brings relief. There are poisons, but 
there are antidotes. Nature did not leave us un- 
exposed to the evils surrounding us. We cer- 
tainly were not intended to be miserable, but to be 
happy. 

But men are not happy. They often make 
themselves unhappy by overlooking the thousand 
comforts and fixing their attention upon some one 
thing which they have lost or which they covet. 
Many Ahabs with superabundance weep and refuse 
to eat because they covet the little gardens of Na- 
boths. Men pervert pleasures and turn them into 
pains. Proper labor is itself pleasant and condu- 
cive to health and happiness, but the millions toil 
inordinately and wear out life in ceaseless strug- 
gle. The furrow fixed by care upon the brow is 
not effaced by the smile that plays in the social 
circle. Our passions are inflamed by unreasonable 
indulgences. Weakened constitutions follow ex- 
cesses. Selfish aims create conflicts. There are so 
many sufferings that it has been gravely ques- 
tioned whether life is worth the living. The race 
falls far short of its possible happiness. 

Freedom. — Man was made for freedom. The 
ancients had no clear conception of this truth, and 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 131 

even Plato and Aristotle taught that some men 
were by nature slaves. The differences among men 
were more obtrusive, and great as were these phil- 
osophers, they failed to see the common humanity 
which lies back of all outwar4 diversity and con- 
stitutes one common brotherhood. The universal 
desire for liberty might have taught them that no 
man was born to be a slave. Men in bondage pine 
as imprisoned birds. Years in servitude may make 
the yoke tolerable, but never pleasant. No heredi- 
tary influence can render it natural. The free will, 
the power of self-determination in the higher 
sphere of character, protests against shackles as 
unnatural, and cries out for freedom. It gives the 
lie to all the badges of bondage. All men, because 
they were created rational, were created free, and 
so far as the value of humanity reaches they are 
equal. Because they are men they are entitled to 
liberty. Slavery is a wrong. It is an outrage 
upon our common nature. It is an indignity to 
humanity, and an insult to the race. Unless we 
read Nature's purposes backward, all men were 
created to be free. 

But as a matter of fact, all men have not been 
free. Millions have been in bondage. In the days 
of the Gracchi, two-thirds of the population in 



132 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Italy were slaves. In Greece, which has long been 
celebrated as the cradle of liberty and whose strug- 
gles for freedom have stirred the schoolboy's heart 
in all succeeding ages, only the favored few were 
freemen, and the rest were slaves. In Egypt the 
slaves were so abundant that several hundred thou- 
sand lives might be sacrificed in gratifying the 
whim of a king. The ancient world never had the 
idea of personal freedom — theirs was only civic 
liberty. It was the freedom of the State, and not 
that of the individual. While England was grow- 
ing up in its liberty, and long after it had wrested 
from John its Magna Charta, the churls were slaves 
and the serfs mere chattels. Feudalism, which 
ruled in Europe for several centuries, was an organ- 
ized system of slavery where a few nobles held the 
rest in bondage. When England emancipated her 
slaves under William IV. in 1834, there were still, 
despite the labors of philanthropists like Clarkson 
and Wilberforce, three-fourths of a million in the 
Empir In the United States, the home of free- 
dom, that country which published the doctrine 
that all men are created free and equal, there were 
four millions of slaves emancipated in 1865. In 
South Africa the Boers, with the connivance of 
England, steal and enslave the African tribes about 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 33 

them. There are in various parts of the world 
many millions still in slavery. From the days of 
Abraham, men have been bought and sold. There 
has been a large portion of the race which has 
lived and died in slavery. Thus the purpose of the 
Creator has been thwarted, and millions, without 
any fault of theirs, have, through gross injustice, 
never known one of the greatest pleasures of exist- 
ence, or enjoyed one of the most sacred rights of 
man. If there is no future life, these wrongs can 
never be set right. 

Knowledge. — We were made for intelligence. 
Instinct does less for us than for any other part 
of the animal world. It directs in the first effort to 
obtain nourishment. It furnishes the first expres- 
sion of want and pain. It assists in some acts 
necessary to personal preservation, as startling in 
sudden danger, and in some connected with the 
perpetuation of the race. But all else is left for us 
to learn. The habeas seen learning the distinction 
between himself and his body, the uses of the 
members of the body, and how to form judgments 
from sensations of sight and hearing, touching and 
smelling. He learns what is pleasant and what is 
hurtful. All this, so far as the brute ever knows 
it, is given by instinct. 



134 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

It is impossible for us to determine how much 
man has learned by his own powers. We cannot 
prove that he was originally a savage, and then 
infer that all he knows he has acquired. We have 
no minute history of the early races. The Bible 
tells us that Cain tilled the soil and afterwards 
went to the land of Nod and built a city. But 
that city was very rude, and his agriculture must 
have been of a very simple form. At that time the 
use of iron and brass was unknown. It was in the 
sixth generation we find Tubal-Cain, "an instructor 
of every artificer in brass and iron." In that same 
age we find Jabal, "the father of all such as dwelt 
in tents and have cattle;" and Jubal, "the father 
of all such as handle the harp and organ." These 
statements give us the rise of certain things which 
we now think belong to the lowest form of civili- 
zation. Whatever may have been the state of so- 
ciety before this, we have here the evidence that 
nearly all the implements of common life were 
obtained through invention. The growth of im- 
provements as known in history is an interesting 
study. Some have been discovered by accident, 
but most by experiment. The wonderful im- 
provements within the last century give promise 
of others still greater and more wonderful in the 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 35 

future. These things are incomparably superior to 
the few things which the highest form of animal 
intelligence has been able to learn. 

We have faculties for knowing things lying 
entirely beyond the range of the useful. The great 
body of our science has no practical bearing. As a 
motive for exercising these faculties Nature has 
given us a keen spirit of inquiry. We are exposed 
to ennui from sameness, and we are driven to 
something new. The love of novelty often runs 
into radicalism, which not rarely blunders upon 
important truth. The purpose of Nature could not 
have been more clearly indicated than is done in 
placing us in such conditions that we must learn 
in order to live, and in giving us higher faculties, 
stimulated by curiosity and the desire to know for 
the sake of knowing. 

But this purpose is not met in the great masses. 
A large part of the world is engaged in winning 
bread, and seeks no knowledge above that which is 
necessary to make a living, and the little current 
in neighborhood gossip. In the most enlightened 
countries, until within the present century, there 
were no proper provisions made for the diffusion 
of knowledge among all classes. The poorer chil- 
dren, except in rare cases, cannot be educated 



136 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

without the assistance of the state. Governments, 
for nine centuries, have provided higher schools. 
Alfred the Great established Oxford, and Charle- 
magne encouraged learning. During the Middle 
Ages every sovereign in Europe, and particularly 
in Germany, wanted a national university. But 
common schools are one of the chief glories of our 
own century. England did not adopt common 
school laws before 1870, and in Great Britain a 
large per cent, cannot read. In France, fourteen 
per cent, are illiterate. In Germany even, where 
the greatest attention has been given to popular 
education, there are two per cent, unable to read. 
It is true that an elementary education is not the 
only means of intelligence, and ability to read is 
not an absolute test. Louis IX. of France and 
Otto I. of Germany were much more intelligent 
than many a parish clerk of their day. Many who 
can read do not read anything worth it, and re- 
main in almost complete ignorance of everything 
beyond the narrowest circle. But where illiteracy 
is great, there we know general ignorance is deep. 
In America, where there are schools of all grades, 
where there are a great number and variety of per- 
iodicals, where the mail facilities are very good, 
where books abound, and agents carry them to the 






CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 37 

door, and by practiced arts press them upon the 
people, there are marks of rapid development, but 
there is evidence also of a very considerable degree 
of ignorance. When we turn from enlightened 
countries to the semi-enlightened and barbarous, 
from Europe and the United States to Africa and 
Asia, the dark belts are very broad. When we 
look from the present through the past, we have 
only a small fraction of the race who may be called 
intelligent. The human family as a whole has not 
met Nature's aim in regard to intelligence. 

Peace. — We were made for peace. All the 
highest interests of men are jeopardized by war. 
Progress is always retarded by the conflict of arms. 
Often war has been made conducive to ultimate 
progress, but only by some higher power overrul- 
ing its own nature to the general good. The end 
could have been reached and the higher interests 
subserved better by other means. War is irra- 
tional, and it is a sad thing to see men who can 
reason take a question from its proper tribunal to 
the arbitrament of the sword. It is unnatural. 
Might can never make right, but every war is an 
appeal to force. The world is coming more and 
more to understand its nature, and will not now, 
as formerly, sacrifice thousands of lives for mere 
trifles. 



138 KVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

But history is so full of the stones of battles that 
war seems to be man's normal condition. The 
ancient monuments are covered with the accounts 
of victories. In a thousand years the temple of 
Janus was closed only three times, each time only 
for a few months, and Rome in this respect was 
not so much unlike its contemporaries. In medi- 
aeval ages Europe was in such constant war that 
the interference of the Church imposing the truce 
of God, preventing any battle from Saturday until 
Monday in each week, was a great benefit to soci- 
ety. The Crusades were a continuous war for two 
centuries. Then followed war after war, until the 
peace of Westphalia brought a little respite. The 
close of last century and the beginning of the 
present were marked by the great Napoleonic wars. 
The United States, outside of the circle of antag- 
onistic influences that so often disturb Europe, has 
been engaged in three important wars since the 
revolution which secured it its national existence. 
It has been estimated that one-tenth of the race 
has perished in war. This, then, is another of 
Nature's aims that has not been met. 

Virtue. — We were made for virtue. A law 
with its internal rewards and penalties has been 
implanted within our nature. We were placed 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 39 

under such relations to social and physical laws 
that virtue is rewarded and vice punished by 
natural consequences. Our happiness is so con- 
nected with virtue that utilitarianism has many 
plausible supports in common facts. The world 
is arranged by its temptations and warnings to 
give us moral discipline. A purpose could not be 
more clearly revealed than that we were made to 
be virtuous. 

But the world is immoral. The picture of 
Grecian and Roman morals in their best days is 
ugly enough, and in their decline is horrible. The 
courts of Europe, with some notable exceptions, 
have been disgraced by gross immoralities, and 
these are indexes of the general public sentiment 
of their times. The truth of Scriptural statements 
as to the general depravity 6f man cannot be 
denied. Men have testified to their guilt by the 
historic efforts to atone for it. Those who have 
been purest have been most frank in confessing 
that they were sinners. The world has had its 
reputed saints, but knows only one spotless 
character : Jesus, the Son of God. Sin abounds. 

Wrongs. — The world is full of wrongs as well 
as failures. The innocent often suffer ; the guilty 
frequently escape. The pious, truth-loving man 



140 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

dies a martyr, while the wicked tyrant lives in 
ease. The hard-faced, iron-hearted inquisitor is 
honored by the world and rewarded by his rulers, 
while the humble confessor languishes in a 
dungeon without books or light, is put occasion- 
ally upon the rack, and at' last is dragged out to be 
burned at the stake. Millions have been executed 
for the impossible crime of witchcraft. Justice 
often fails before the best courts, and frequently 
the wrongs never can be corrected. 

There are many other forms of evil which men 
suffer without compensation in this life, and with- 
out any fault of their own. The little child with 
splendid but yet undeveloped powers, and the 
young man with a bright and useful career open- 
ing before him, fall victims to inherited disease, 
A pre-natal accident imprints a hideous mark or 
even produces idiocy. A careless nurse suffers 
a child to fall, and deformity and lifelong suffering 
ensue. The poor widow with a house full of 
children is driven from office to make way for an 
able-bodied, lazy man. Silly women, with narrow 
selfish spirits, fritter away life in frivolous gossip, 
while under the shadow of their palatial residences, 
worthy women with noble hearts and intellectual 
cravings are worn by poverty which holds them 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 141 

down to the points of needles to obtain the 
scantiest living. The favors of the world are 
most unevenly distributed. Many an ignoble and 
vicious Saul wears the crown, while a princely 
David begs for bread. These wrongs meet us 
everywhere. They contradict our idea of justice. 
They exist despite the manifest tendency of the 
principles of the world. God's purpose is not 
met. If there is no future life, these wrongs can 
never be set right, and God is either unable to 
correct them or indifferent to them, or there is 
no God. 

Objection Stated. — To the argument of this 
chapter it may be objected that the fact that the 
world is under a general government has been 
overlooked. General laws are established for gen- 
eral results, and cannot regard special cases. This 
is true of every law, both civil and natural, and 
injury to individuals is unavoidable. All the evils 
mentioned in the argument are the results of gen- 
eral laws, and have their parallels in nature. 
Much of the unhappiness, slavery, ignorance, war 
and personal evil is brought upon men by them- 
selves, and the remainder is produced by the gen- 
eral course of the natural world. These evils 
belong to the nature of things. The very laws 



142 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

which make happiness, intelligence and virtue 
possible, make misery, ignorance and vice also pos- 
sible. There could not be pleasure without possi- 
ble pain. The imperfections of character grow 
out of our natural condition. By a law some- 
where we are born with a strong bias to sin, a bias 
so strong that theologians call it total depravity, 
and yet no one who believes in God regards him 
as the author of sin. It must be ascribed to nat- 
ural law. The sufferings which come from the 
laws of nature may be injurious, but they are not 
wrongs. The cyclone arising in atmospheric con- 
ditions demolishes a man's house, kills his chil- 
dren, and sweeps away all his property. It would 
be silly for him to complain of injustice. A law 
which brings general good must be accepted, and 
when evils come from it to individuals they must 
patiently submit. The idea of future compensa- 
tion for the natural evils of life involves too much. 
It would prove that the beggar must be higher 
than the rich man who was equally good, and that 
the life-long sufferer must be saved, or there is no 
possible compensation for his evils. To perfect 
the plan of the world and correct all the wrongs, 
not merely a future life is necessary, but universal 
salvation; for as long: as one individual is lost, the 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 143 

purpose of happiness, knowledge and virtue for all 
is incomplete. The plainer and simpler way is to 
rest satisfied with the common results, and regard 
with pity the innocent victims of the course of the 
world. 

Answered. — There is force in this objection. 
On atheistic ground, it is, perhaps, unanswerable. 
The atheist regards the world as the product of 
blind force, and the irresponsible laws of the world 
can not do an injustice. They are carried forward 
without a plan, and, therefore, can not be charged 
with failure. The argument of this chapter, then, 
can have little weight with one who denies the ex- 
istence of God, nor with one who denies the fact 
of Providence. On theistic ground, some of the 
points of the objection carry us back to the great 
problem of evil, and cannot be fully met. We 
must take the facts on both sides, and determine 
on which side lies the greater probability. 

It must be admitted by all, atheist and theist, 
that man has higher rights than other creatures, 
and suffers wrong where they suffer only injury. 
We cannot reason from the myriads of blasted buds, 
and the bruised plants, and twisted and gnarled 
and stunted trees, to the injuries of men. Nor can 
we reason even from the waste of animal life and 



144 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

feeling, the countless numbers of birds and fish and 
more feeble animals brought forth simply to perish 
in their infancy, the affectionate dogs kicked and 
starved, and faithful horses strained and whipped 
and killed by heartless masters. The plant has no 
rights, and philosophers like Kant and Hickok 
have denied that even animals, because wanting in 
personality, have rights and claims. But whatever 
we may think of this philosophic opinion, the 
claims of animals are not of the same order as that 
of man, and when an animal is injured we are not 
so offended as when man is. We are not so indig- 
nant at the cruel master of the brute as at the cruel 
owner of human slaves. The difference in the 
judgment may be grounded in selfishness, but still 
it is the universal feeling. We cannot regard the 
evils in the human world in the same way that we 
do similar ones in the lower order of beings. 

We have a consciousness of individuality which 
modifies the conception of our relation to general 
law. The brute has a feeling of identity and a 
sense of pain, but not of personality and wrong. 
He may be sunk in the interests of his species 
without a feeling of injustice. We are aware of 
relations to our race, and of great claims upon our- 
selves that may even demand our self-sacrifice, but 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 145 

we never lose the consciousness of individuality. 
When life is given for the general weal it must be 
offered voluntarily or we feel most deeply wronged. 
Individuality is never sunk in the mass. There 
are personal claims never surrendered. We have a 
right to our moral character against the world. 
No seeming good, whatever, to the world can make 
a valid demand upon the individual for a single 
immoral act. This claim holds against the uni- 
verse. If we could imagine that an infinite being 
were to chain us Prometheus-like to a rock and 
torture us forever because we refused to commit a 
vile act, we would denounce him as a tyrant. This 
conviction has long existed as a maxim: u L,et 
justice be done though the heavens fall." 

The individual seems to have claims, therefore, 
against general law. If there is nothing behind 
physical law, no responsible agent, man has no 
claims and can only submit to be crushed. He 
may try to make the best of it and look for com- 
pensation in a better character. But it may be 
that the injury he has received issues in an early 
death. The character may last, say, only two or 
three months, and then, after intense suffering all 
the while, go out into nothingness. It is cold 
comfort. As one stands over the smoking ruins of 



146 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

his home in which went down his family, he may 
possibly dismiss thought with the remark, "It 
cannot be helped," but the heart is not satisfied. 
The innate sense of wrong asserts claims, and thus 
implies a God behind these general laws who will 
recompense for the evil done. The cyclone may 
ruin, but if we can feel that there is another life 
where the injury will be converted into good, every 
demand of justice is met, and there is inward satis- 
faction. The pre-natal mark may disfigure and 
embarrass, or the inherited disease may cut off life 
as it opens brilliantly, but the mind and heart are 
at rest when it may look forward to another life. 
There may be an inherited tendency to sin, but if 
there are motives and influences sufficient to re- 
strain it and form personal character and shape 
destiny, there can be, and there is, no sense of in- 
justice. An infinite God can and will make all 
things that happen unequally under general law 
equal in the future life. But when we shut off 
faith in that life the world is full of wrongs that 
can never be corrected, and we escape madness by 
-declining thought. 

If we take our stand with atheism, we are the 
products of blind force, and feel that we are its 
victims. There are no claims or rights except as 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 47 

man against man. There may be, for aught we 
know, an eternal future of misery without guilt, 
and we dare not complain of it as injustice. The 
idea of character grew up out of sensations and 
now remains only as an inveterate prejudice. There 
are no eternal principles of right, but certain max- 
ims of prudence which have been transmuted into 
conscience, and there is really no such thing as 
character. The world came we know not how, 
and will go we know not where, and all is gov- 
erned by the iron rule of fate. Our sense of justice 
is a fiction of legislators which we find profitable 
to perpetuate, and all our primary ideas are illu- 
sions. We are the sports of fortune. Coming out 
of darkness and going back into it again, we can 
know nothing beyond the narrow range of experi- 
ence. It is best to drift along with the current, 
making ourselves as comfortable as possible, and 
when the tide turns against us bow to our fate and 
end all by one blow. This solves the problem by 
writing failure upon the destiny of man and clos- 
ing the darkest curtains about our heads. This is 
the outlook from atheism. 

But if we take our stand in theism we have a 
sufficient cause for the world. We have a Ruler 
who is able to correct all the evils growing out of 



148 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the general administration of the laws of nature. 
We have an infinitely wise and holy power presid- 
ing over our destiny. He never does evil by mis- 
take or weakness. He is able to perfect all His 
plans. He will never leave a wrong without cor- 
rection. He is the centre of those principles which 
we are compelled to regard eternal, and affords a 
sufficient cause and ground for our own personality. 
Because the present life does not furnish scope for 
the execution of His schemes and the adjustment of 
the evils, He has ordained for us another life and 
given us promises in the innate desire, in the uni- 
versal belief, in the sense of justice, and also in a 
claim which He has implanted in our hearts. 
Every proof of the existence of God is a proof of a 
future life. If there is a God and not another life, 
there are promises which He never fulfills, and 
plans which He never carries out. He stands, in 
all the light we have now, convicted of injustice. 

It may be said that in the absolute blank which 
will follow the close of human life on earth — a 
close which science even is able to foresee — in the 
absolute stillness that comes when the last wail of 
human grief has ceased, there will be no one to 
charge Him with failure or blame for injustice. 
There will be no one but God Himself. He will 



CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 149 

be left to reflect upon the facts that the world was 
never perfected; that He gave us capacities that 
were never fully developed; that He inspired us 
with hopes that were never realized; that He en- 
dowed us with a sense of individuality and rights 
which He never respected; that He crushed mill- 
ions of persons for the benefit of a few for only a 
moment in the vast sweep of eternity; that He 
made promises only to deceive. He will stand 
condemned before His own conscience and will be 
tortured by the thoughts of His own degradation. 
No, no: God cannot do wrong. We shrink from 
the statement of the possibility, even though it be 
to bring out truth. We must believe in a future 
life or leap back into atheism. If there is a God, 
we shall die only to live again. If there is no God, 
then welcome annihilation. Nothingness is infi- 
nitely preferable to an eternity without a heavenly 
Father. Having had the conception of infinite 
truth and holiness, let it go out only with exist- 
ence. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 

THE Bible contains the sacred books of more 
-*- than one-fourth of the human family. The 
Old Testament is held in devout, almost super- 
stitious reverence by eight millions of Jews. The 
whole Bible is received by four hundred millions 
of Christians as a divine revelation. 

The Bible is a very old book. The latest part 
cannot be later than the fourth century A. D. As 
a complete book it is therefore, at the very least, 
fourteen hundred years old. In its oldest part it 
dates back three thousand five hundred years. 
The most radical criticism admits that portions 
of the Pentateuch belong to the Mosaic age. If 
it is not the oldest, it is certainly one of the very 
oldest books now extant. 

The Old Testament grew up among the Jews. 
They were inferior to their cotemporaries in 
science and art, but they were superior in religious 
conceptions. Their monotheism and moral code 
have been accepted by the civilized world. They 

(150) 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 151 

have been the teachers of the world in religion. 
Christianity sprang up in the Roman Empire dur- 
ing its Augustan period. It fought its way up 
through persecution, brought to its aid all the 
higher elements of society, and has been the power 
of the highest civilization for fifteen hundred years. 

Such old books, having so great authority and 
power over the most enlightened people of the 
world, are entitled to respect, and their teaching 
has certainly some weight. If the most intelligent 
part of our race has been deceived upon a matter 
in which the profoundest interest has been felt, we 
may well despair of the truth. 

The Bible teaches clearly the doctrine of a future 
life. The earlier statements may be somewhat 
vague and uncertain, but enunciations become 
clearer and more distinct until we reach the New 
Testament, where they are very positive and defi- 
nite. The dreamy, confused hope grows into a 
most decided conviction. The belief is implied in 
every Christian doctrine, and so interwoven into 
every thread of the system, that if it be eliminated 
we have nothing of its religion left worth the 
saving. 

If the Bible were only a human book, its testi- 
mony to a future life would be, in some degree, 



152 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

evidence of the fact. What has been believed by 
so many and for so long a time, must have a basis 
in truth. But the Bible claims to be a revelation 
from God. This claim is fundamental. If that 
claim can be invalidated, the essential element of 
its character is destroyed, and it is difficult for us 
to hold it in that respect which in any case it de- 
mands as a record of human beliefs. But if its 
claims can be maintained, it becomes ultimate in 
authority, its teaching as to a future life the answer 
of the Author of our nature to the great question 
of humanity, "If a man die shall he live again?" 
and here doubt ends. Absolute certainty as to the 
validity of that claim gives us absolute certainty of 
life after death ; but if that claim can only be made 
worthy of our belief, then its doctrine of future 
existence is made to the same extent credible. 
Whatever evidence the Bible commands in support 
of its claims is evidence of a future life. All the 
arguments, internal, external and collateral, of 
Christian evidences, are so many arguments for 
our post mortem existence. We cannot attempt 
here a general discussion of a subject upon which 
so many volumes have been written, but must con- 
fine ourselves to a brief statement of a few points 
bearing more immediately upon the evidence of 
our immortality. 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 153 

The books of the New Testament have all the 
evidence as to their authenticity that can be reason- 
ably asked. They are very short, most of them 
being letters either to individuals or to congrega- 
tions. The age in which they were written did 
not keep strict records of authorship. Even Chris- 
tians did not as a rule cite their authorities by 
name until the last quarter of the second century. 
We cannot look for proofs of authenticity in contem- 
porary literature. How many books of the first 
century could stand this test ? But the evidence is 
very strong that they were in existence in the 
Apostolic age, were regarded as sacred, and were 
entrusted to the strictest custody of the ministers 
of the churches. Clement of Alexandria tells us 
that a continuous line of bishops bore testimony to 
their genuineness, and no book was received which 
was not so accredited. We know that a great deal 
of care was taken in forming the canon, and that 
no book was admitted that did not have positive 
proof. Some books known now to be equal in 
evidence with the others, were long held in ques- 
tion by parts of the Church because they were not 
fully certified. The Tubingen school of criticism 
left us four epistles of Paul as unquestionable, and 
these four assure us of the great events in the life 



154 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

of Christ, including the greatest of His miracles. 
But the Tubingen theologians have been driven 
away from the position of Bauer, and now acknowl- 
edge as certainly authentic all the books necessary 
for our argument. No books of that period can 
command a tithe of the evidence which the books 
of the New Testament have as to their authentic- 
ity. 

Aside from the proof of their authenticity, 
there is other evidence of their credibility. They 
record what was universally believed among Chris- 
tians of the first century. They give us what the 
disciples believed. They are the records of eye- 
witnesses, no matter who wrote them. This evi- 
dence is so clear that many acknowledge their 
credibility in general, but still question it in re- 
gard to the miracles, because they suppose that 
miracles are impossible. 

Miracles do not now have the prominence in 
Apologetics that they once had. More importance 
is attached to other proofs. But they are so con- 
nected with the Biblical story and with our reli- 
gion, itself professing to be miraculous, that they 
never can cease to be important. The Christian 
will always be called to defend his belief in them, 
and they must remain one of the chief grounds of 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 55 

his faith. If they can be shown to be impossible, 
or the evidence for them incredible, Christianity, 
as we now regard it, must be abandoned, and be- 
reft of our certainty of a future life, we must fall 
back into a wavering hope. 

Miracles are not impossible. John Stuart Mill 
has given the weight of his great name to what 
is really a dictum of common sense: God is a suf- 
ficient cause for miracles. He may not choose to 
do it, but an Almighty Being can work miracles 
if He will. Only atheists can say that miracles 
are impossible. 

Miracles are not improbable. Serious men in 
all ages of the world have felt the need of some 
direct revelation of God's will. Some of the deep- 
est longings of the heart cry for a word from God, 
clearer and more distinct than any which comes 
through nature. Men who have professed to have 
direct messages from Him have never failed to find 
an audience. On its spiritual side, this is the 
secret of the power of Mormonism in our day, 
just as it was of Mohammedanism in the early 
centuries and of Numa in the beginnings of 
Rome. If God is the kind, loving Father that 
Nature indicates, and our hearts in their better 

moods instinctively regard Him, He will not leave 
7* 



156 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

that great want unmet. He did not plant that de- 
sire merely to torture us, but will at the proper 
time gratify it. He does answer the cry of His 
children, and out from behind the cloud He speaks 
to them. 

God could give a revelation to each individual, or 
He could make it to the world through certain 
chosen agencies. If there is a revelation at all, it is 
not made to each person, nor is it written upon the 
sky, but it was given through prophets to be com- 
municated at first orally, and then to be committed 
to writing. A miracle is a sufficient credential for 
one chosen to communicate a truth imparted to 
him by inspiration. He who works above the laws 
of nature to confirm a message must be sent of God. 
Nicodemus, believing that Christ wrought mira- 
cles, gave expression to a rational judgment when 
he said, u No man could do the things which thou 
doest, except God be with him. ' ' No other creden- 
tials are so good as miracles. If the revelation be 
within the range of reason, no one can be sure that 
it was not simply a discovery by reason, and com- 
mending itself to reason, it needs no credential. 
But if it be above reason, its confirmation must be 
sought in some light outside of itself, and that can 
be found only in miracles. If God gives a general 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 157 

revelation, like that which the Bible claims to be, 
and takes the only sufficient and best possible cre- 
dentials, he will give his agents miraculous power. 
Miracles are as probable as is a direct communica- 
tion from God. 

Upon these points there has been little contro- 
versy. The main question is in regard to the 
sufficiency of the evidence of the miracles of the 
Bible. 

Miracles can be proven by testimony. Hume's 
celebrated argument is sophistical. He held, on 
the basis of the philosophy of Locke, that all know- 
ledge comes through experience. It is through 
experience that we learn both the uniformity of 
nature and the reliability of testimony. But ex- 
perience teaches that nature is perfectly uniform, 
while human testimony, sometimes by intentional 
misrepresentation and sometimes by misconcep- 
tion, often deceives us. However great the evi- 
dence from testimony as to a miracle, the evi- 
dence from nature is always greater. Hume fell 
on this argument in a discussion with a Romish 
priest about miracles reported to be taking place at 
that time. He found that it answered the pur- 
poses of his skepticism and elaborated it, but it 
may not be too much to say that he himself never 



T58 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

fully accepted it. It is true that individual and 
conspired human testimony sometimes deceives 
us, but concurrent testimony without previous 
agreement does not and cannot. If three or more 
competent persons, without any complicity, testify 
to the same miracle, open to the full test of the 
senses, we are forced to believe. That concur- 
rence is a fact that can have no cause except in the 
truth, while the miracle has a cause in the power 
of God. The case may stand thus: a fact with an 
adequate cause against a fact without a possible 
cause. 

Huxley, the editor and biographer of Hume, re- 
cedes from Hume's argument. He admits that if 
one man of sufficient scientific ability to make a 
thorough examination and of well-established ve- 
racity were to testify that he had seen a centaur, 
he would believe. Prof. Huxley in common with 
the world believes that a miracle may be proven 
by testimony. It is then only a question of fact. 
Is the testimony sufficient to prove the miracles of 
the Bible ? 

The testimony comes to us from both friends 
and enemies of Christianity. The facts were not 
called in question for several centuries after the 
Apostolic age. Julian, the emperor, admits them, 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 159 

but tries to minimize them. Hierocles attempts to 
offset them by publishing the stories about Apollo- 
nius of Tyana. The Sanhedrim voiced the feel- 
ing of that and subsequent ages, when it said, 
1 ' That great and notable miracles have been 
done is known to all the people of Israel, and 
we cannot deny them." Christians everywhere 
from the beginning boldly asserted it, and their 
enemies admitted that miracles were performed by 
Christ and by the Apostles. The testimony can 
be assailed only on the ground of the incompe- 
tency of the age to judge of the miraculous. 

Mr. Lecky has said, and brings strong proof of 
the fact, that it was a superstitious period disposed 
to see miracles, and therefore saw them. Testi- 
mony, he thinks, may prove a miracle, but not 
that of the first Christian century. 

The superstition has been magnified. The Jews 
were not so superstitious, so disposed to find 
miracles, that they attributed the miraculous power 
to John the Baptist, though they all believed that 
he was a great prophet. They had not discovered 
any miracle for four hundred years. How then did 
this inventive power become suddenly so active? 
It is strange that a people so easily deceived should 
have given rise to the greatest religion of the world. 



l6o EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Paul and John, as well as the masses, believed that 
they witnessed them, and both these men were 
fully persuaded that they themselves wrought 
them. What is stranger still, is that all were de- 
ceived in matters that were open to the tests of the 
senses. It is inconceivable that honest men should 
think that they saw a man whom they had long 
known to be blind given sight by a touch, when 
they did not; or a man long helpless suddenly re- 
stored, when no such thing really occurred. Super- 
stition may carry men very far into blindness, but 
it has its limits. It could not be so deep as to 
make a whole age of friends and enemies alike be- 
lieve in such miracles as are recorded in the New 
Testament, numerous, varied, manifest, when they 
did not take place. 

Christ claimed to perform miracles. It was a 
claim deliberately and repeatedly made. If He 
merely pretended to perform them, He was an im- 
postor; and if He was Himself deceived, He was a 
weak man. If He was an impostor, how did He 
create those holy conceptions He communicated to 
the world? and how could He beget the impression 
of that ideal character so falsely imputed to Him ? 
If He was weak, how did He gain His influence 
over the world, and as teacher win the profoundest 
allegiance of the greatest minds? 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. l6l 

Rationalism in the last century failed to account 
for the miracles on the ground of naturalism. It 
has failed as signally in our own on the theory of 
myths, though supported by all the ability and 
learning of David Strauss. It haughtily declines 
explanation where it finds so much difficulty, and 
with Matthew Arnold says, "We know that 
miracles do not occur ." But we reply that this is, 
not sufficient reason for saying that they never did* 
Men are to-day neither immediately created nor 
evolved from the lower animals. Shall we say that 
they belong to an infinite series? "We know that 
Shakespeares do not occur," and shall we deny 
that there ever was a Shakespeare? When the 
reason for miracles ceases, the facts disappear. 

If we disbelieve in the miracles of the New 
Testament, it must be in the face of evidence that 
would be regarded as superabundant in other 
things, and we fall back on the mere possibility of 
error in a case the very nature of which prevents 
anything like a demonstration. 

From the New Testament we reason back to the 
Old. Christ and the Apostles endorsed the Jewish 
canon as divine books, and it makes no great differ- 
ence to us when or by whom they were written. . 
A book approved by inspiration has all the author- 



162 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

ity of one divinely inspired. Having satisfied our- 
selves as to the miracles of the New, we cannot 
doubt those of the Old. We believe the story of 
the sun's standing still, of the ass's speaking, of 
the whale's swallowing Jonah, and all of them, not 
in the sense in which the uneducated understand 
them, but as real miraculous events. 

Prophecies are supernatural facts, miracles, in the 
sphere of mind. They are predictions of events 
above all possible human forecast. They may 
serve the double purpose of preparing those for 
whom they are intended for the events, and of be- 
coming credentials of the system to which they 
belong. To be sure of a prophecy, we must be 
certain both as to the prediction and the fulfil- 
ment. 

There are prophecies in both Testaments. In 
the New we have the predictions of Christ concern- 
ing His own resurrection and the circumstances 
attending the destruction of Jerusalem. There 
can be little doubt that the Gospels of Matthew and 
Luke were written s-everal years before the great 
Jewish war. There is both internal and external 
evidence of the fact. The authors write in a sim- 
ple, unaffected way about the temple as if still 
standing. The whole manner and style are those 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 63 

of historians, not those of novelists. Tradition 
that was not questioned for many centuries, too late 
to be overthrown, assigns the composition of these 
two Gospels to the period before the siege of Jeru- 
salem. These books give us many minute predic- 
tions. Josephus, who did not know of them, and 
without any sympathy with Christianity, wrote the 
history of his own times. Unintentionally he 
records the most exact fulfillment of all that Christ 
foretold concerning the last days of the sacred city. 
In the Old Testament we have predictions con- 
cerning individuals, as Cyrus and Alexander the 
Great; concerning cities, as Babylon and Tyre; and 
concerning nations, as the Egyptians and Jews. 
The fulfillment of these prophecies is given in 
history and on monuments remaining to the pres- 
ent time. The prophecies which are most used as 
evidence are those concerning Christ. They are 
largely typical, and their prophetic value has been 
questioned ; but they were regarded as prophecies 
by the Jewish people, who understood best their 
own modes of thought and forms of expression. 
These prophecies led them to look for a Messiah at 
the very time Christ came, and enabled them to 
find His birth-place and determine many of the 
particulars of His life. The argument drawn from 



164 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the prophecies was always of greatest force with a 
Jew. The prophecies were certainly in existence 
several hundred years before Christ came. The 
Septuagint version, made under Ptolemy Philadel- 
phus about 270 B. C, gives us the fullest proof of 
this fact. In these prophecies we have miracles as 
great as any recorded in the Bible. 

The Bible carries with itself its own light. The 
truth and the miracles mutually support each 
other. Each furnishes a proof to the other. It is 
not strange, then, that we find some emphasizing 
more the miracles and others more the truth. 

The Bible is a book of religion, and it is not ad- 
dressed directly to the reason or the moral nature, 
but to religious intuitions. It seeks to reach the 
religious nature through the understanding and 
conscience, but its ultimate aim is always the reli- 
gious element in us. In calling out the religious 
character it elevates the whole man, stimulating 
the intellect, quickening the conscience, and pro- 
moting the well-being of every factor of his na- 
ture. A true religion must civilize and enlighten. 
According to this test, Christianity is the truest 
religion ever offered to the world. 

Its power in modern civilization is above dis- 
pute. It has gained its influence by its own inher- 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 65 

ent truth. It has discarded all the means employed 
by the world, yet it has risen from a remote corner 
to the supremacy of the most enlightened peoples 
of the earth. It has sometimes fallen into the, 
hands of most unworthy friends. The outward 
Church has often been blind and degraded, and has 
exposed itself to severest censure, but Christianity 
is always distinguishable from its professors. It be- 
trays a want of honesty in any scholar who makes 
Christianity responsible for the evils of the Church. 
Despite these errors of its professors, the religion 
has held its course. It has risen up from under 
the superstition that was piled around it, and dis- 
engaged itself from all the false alliances forced 
upon it. It has an inherent energy independent 
of those who propagate it. It has shown a vitality 
that can be nothing less than divine. 

The Bible commends itself to the human heart. 
It reveals the human spirit to itself. It opens up 
its mysterious depths and portrays its hidden char- 
acter. The woman of Samaria said, "I have 
found the Messiah, because He has told me all that 
ever I did." As she stood before Christ she felt 
that she was in the presence of one who thor- 
oughly understood her as only God could, and 
therefore He must be the one sent from God. 



1 66 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The Bible has made millions tremble before this 
strange power. It uncovers our hearts to our own 
inspection, and flashes on us a sense of our sinful- 
ness. It makes us stand with unveiled faces in a 
divine light. It makes us feel that its author fully 
understands us. It brings with it life. It works 
not merely a moral reformation, but a renovation. 
The Bible calls it regeneration, and so the Chris- 
tian feels it. It creates a radical change such as 
no human instrumentality has ever done, such as 
we believe only God can do. 

The Bible meets the deepest wants of our spirit- 
ual nature, and comes therefore with the marks of 
its divine paternity upon it. We feel that our 
hearts and the Bible have one common Author. 

This can be positive and direct evidence only to 
the personal subjects, but it has also its evidential 
value for others. When a great number testify to 
the same experience from the same cause, we be- 
lieve. Millions have testified to this power of 
Christianity over themselves. The changed char- 
acters confirm their testimony. Whatever influ- 
ence Christianity has had over the world in its 
moral, intellectual and political phases, has been 
only the reflex power from the religious transfor- 
mations it has wroueht. The new face the world 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 167 

wears is a confirmation of what Christians claim to 
have realized. If error has such happy results, we 
need not be so much concerned about the truth. 
If Christians are deceived and Christianity a delu- 
sion, the world ought to rejoice over the deception. 
But falsehoods and lies never sanctify. They can- 
not make men better, and Christianity cannot be 
false. 

The Bible presents us with the only perfect life 
in history. Mr. Lecky, the able historian of Eu- 
ropean Morals, said, "It was reserved for Chris- 
tianity to present to the world an ideal character, 
which through all the changes of eighteen cen- 
turies has filled the hearts of men with impas- 
sioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting 
on all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions, 
and has not only been the highest pattern of vir- 
tue, but the highest incentive to its practice, and 
has exerted so deep an influence that it may be 
truly said that the simple record of three short 
years of active life has done more to soften and re- 
generate mankind than all the disquisitions of 
philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. 
This has been the well-spring of whatever is best 
and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the 

*Vol, 2, p. 8. 



1 68 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, the per- 
secutions and fanaticism which have defaced the 
the Church, it has preserved in the character and 
example of its Founder an enduring principle of 
regeneration.' ' Christ was not simply the greatest 
of great men, but the only perfect man. 

This character is portrayed in the Gospels written 
by fishermen. The ideal which lives in the Church 
was not a fiction, a slow creation of excited imagi- 
nations, but was drawn from the writings of the 
disciples. They write as plain historians, noting 
only facts as they occurred. In these simple 
narratives they have drawn a perfect life. Christ 
lived it, and in an artless manner, surpassing the 
highest art, they have described it. 

Christ was not a product of His age. He was a 
carpenter, the reputed son of an humble mechanic. 
He was brought up in the little city of Nazareth, 
hid away in the Galilean mountains. He had no 
predecessors except John the Baptist, above whom 
He towers in infinite grandeur. He stands a soli- 
tary figure among His own countrymen, as He does 
in the world. This life is a fact, and if it had not 
a divine origin, it was without any known cause. 

This life stands in a peculiar relation to Chris- 
tianity. It is its central principle. The whole 



EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 69 

system depends upon it. Eliminate the personal 
history of Christ from His religion, and the vital 
power is destroyed. No other teacher has sustained 
such a relation to his doctrines. In this Christianity 
is wholly unique among all the philosophies and 
religions of the world. 

The religion of the Bible is, therefore, a super- 
natural power introduced among the forces of the 
world. It is a miracle, and having accepted it ac- 
cording to its claims, we cannot stumble at its 
miracles. The supernatural events which attended 
its introduction and its most important additions, 
were only in harmony with its own nature, and 
were to be expected. The Jews looked for great 
miracles at the coming of the Christ, and asked in 
wonder at those performed by Jesus of Nazareth. 
"When Christ is come, will He perform greater 
works than this man?" The miracles were digni- 
fied and benevolent, and serve to illustrate the 
truths He taught. They were works worthy of 
God. 

The truth taught in the Bible, bearing in itself 
a divine light and power and confirmed by mir- 
acles, is worthy of our credence. It has com- 
manded the confidence of the vast majority of the 
greatest thinkers for eighteen hundred years, and 



170 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the failure of all recent assaults shows how impreg- 
nable the rock is upon which our faith rests. 

When it tells us that we shall live forever, it 
comes to us as a voice from God, giving us cer- 
tainty instead of a simple hope. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

THE Jews obtained their position in history and 
■*■ literature chiefly, if not exclusively, from their 
religion. They were never important factors in 
the political world. .The prominence which they 
had for a short time under David and Solomon in 
their own section in Asia, was soon lost. Their 
kings during most of the subsequent ages were 
tributaries to the great monarchs of the East. 
They were not eminent in art, or science, or 
letters. They lost their country eighteen hundred 
years ago, and since that time have been scattered 
through the earth. They have given rise to no 
very great writers or philosophers who remained 
true to their ancient but now perverted faith. Men 
like Spinoza and Neander and Delitzsch are not 
thought of as Jews. The Jews are merely a rem- 
nant, numbering only about eight millions. Yet 
they hold a prominent place in the eye of the 
world. It is not on account of what they now are, 

or what they have done in the political world, but 

(171) 



172 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

because of the part they have taken in religious 
history. Through them has come the most im- 
portant of all religions, and their work in this 
matter will not permit the world to overlook or 
forget them. 

The Old Testament contains their sacred books, 
and in them we may trace the history of their doc- 
trine of a future life and the evidence upon which 
it was believed. 

The Jews made a distinction between spirit and 
soul. Sometimes they seem to have regarded 
them as distinct principles, but at other times as 
different phases of the same principle. The spirit 
was supposed to be the animating principle. The 
brutes have spirits, though essentially different 
from the human. The soul springs out of the 
spirit, contains the substance of the spirit as its es- 
sential principle, and lives only by the power of 
the spirit. The soul gives individuality. It is the 
person. In swoons the spirit departs ; in death, 
the soul. The Queen of Sheba was overcome by 
the splendor of Solomon, and u there was no more 
spirit in her. n David, recovered from extreme ill- 
ness, said, "Thou hast brought my soul out of 
Sheol." 

There are two opinions, each advocated by able 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 73 

men, in regard to the Old Testament doctrine of a 
future life. Some, as Hahn, have held that the 
Jews believed in annihilation, while others have 
found even in the Pentateuch a clearness and defin- 
iteness of conception of another life little less than 
that of the New Testament. Two questions, easily 
confused, ought to be kept distinct: What did the 
Jews believe? What does the Old Testament 
teach ? 

It is improbable, in advance of the examination 
of the facts, that the Jews in the time of Abraham, 
and especially in the time of the great Pilgrimage, 
were ignorant of a future life. It is certain that 
Moses was not, for it had long been a positive faith 
of the Egyptians, and he was learned in all their 
wisdom. The statement of Tacitus is not worth 
anything as proof of the source of their belief, be- 
cause he was too far removed from the age and the 
means of information ; but it does give us the fact 
that the belief in existence after death had been 
common among the Jews for a long time, and also 
his opinion as to its probable origin among them. 
He says l ' that they learned from the Egyptians to 
bury the body rather than burn it, and there was 
the same conviction and care for the souls of the 
dead." 



174 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The Jews were the custodians of revelation. 
God made a covenant with Abraham and renewed 
it with his sons. He gave the law through Moses 
and instituted the Jewish worship. They had, 
many centuries in advance of all other people, the 
doctrine of monotheism clearly taught in their 
sacred rites. The one God of the Decalogue was 
soon revealed as the only God. They were taught 
that man had been created in the image of his 
Maker, because God had breathed into him a living 
breath and made him a living soul. It is not prob- 
able that they would be so much in advance of 
their contemporaries in the more abstract concep- 
tions of God and have so much clearer views of 
moral duty, and yet be so much behind them in 
regard to their own eternal destiny. 

But when we come to look at the records of their 
faith, we are surprised at the indefiniteness and con- 
fusion of their statements. Is it the result of ig- 
norance, or reserve ? From Augustine to Warbur- 
ton, theologians have recognized the problem and 
tried to solve it. Account for it as we may, the 
fact is clear that so far as the history shows there 
was a positive conviction as to a future existence, 
but not a cheerful, hopeful view of death. Per- 
owne thought the silence in the Pentateuch pro- 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 75 

found and says that "only a hint is dropt here and 
there suggestive of a belief which is never expli- 
citly stated." But the hints are strong enough to 
indicate the fact that they believed that the soul 
passed into a state called Sheol and was at rest from 
earthly cares. There was also a positive element 
of comfort in their conception of Sheol, because 
they believed that they were there gathered unto 
the fathers. ' 'Abraham gave up the ghost and was 
gathered unto his people." (Gen xxv. 8) So it is 
also said of Isaac (Gen xxxv. 29). Jacob comforted 
himself over the death, as he supposed, of Joseph 
by the hope of meeting him in Sheol. "I will go 
down into Sheol unto my son mourning" (Gen 
xxxvii. 35). It was not the grave, for he supposed 
that Joseph had been devoured by beasts. Jacob 
died and was gathered unto his people. Where we 
look for more distinct hopes, as we would naturally 
expect at the death of Aaron or that of Moses, we 
find nothing. Balaam, though not a Jew, seemed 
to rise to the conception of a higher fate for the 
righteous after death when he said, "Let me die the 
death of the righteous and let my last end be like 
his." But into even this language we may read 
more than he intended. 

In the Mosaic laws there is no use made of future 



Ij6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

retributions as motives of obedience. The rewards 
and punishments are confined to this life. This 
has exposed Mosaism to attacks from Deists and 
Rationalists. They have charged it with Eude- 
monism. De Witte says it made the people ex- 
ceedingly unhappy, and begot a gloomy view of 
life. The charge in the sense intended is false, 
but serves to bring out clearly the fact that the 
Mosaic religion sought to emphasize the great 
privilege and happiness of communion with God 
irrespective of time, and did not make prominent 
the retributions after death. 

So far as appears from the Pentateuch only, the 
Jews seem to have failed to draw the inferences 
which naturally followed from the great truths of 
man's creation and of his covenant relation to God. 
Without any positive proof, we would believe that 
they had more definite views and clearer hopes 
than have been preserved in their history. The 
author of the book of Hebrews in the New Testa- 
ment asserts it. "These [the patriarchs] all died 
in faith, not having received the promises, but 
having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of 
them and embraced them, and confessed that they 
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For 
they that say such things declare plainly that they 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 77 

seek a country. And truly if they had been mind- 
ful of that from whence they came out they might 
have had opportunity to have returned. But now 
they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly; 
wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their 
God, for He hath prepared for them a city." If 
we accept this as inspired, there is no longer ques- 
tion that there were hopes and convictions more 
positive than were recorded in their own books. 

In the immediately succeeding period the ex- 
pressions are somewhat clearer, and the faith grows 
a little more definite; but there is still much 
of vagueness, and often seeming inconsistency. 
Sometimes Sheol is represented as a place of forget- 
fulness. David said, "For in death there is no 
remembrance of thee ; in the grave who shall give 
thee thanks?" (Ps. v. 6.) Even God forgets the 
dead: "Free among the dead, like the slain in the 
grave whom thou rememberest no more." (Ps.. 
lxxxviii. 5.) Sometimes it is spoken of as a place 
of silence, where the dead cease to praise God. 
u The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that 
go down into the pit." (Ps. cxv. 17.) "What 
profit is there in my blood when I go down to the 
pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it give 
thee thanks?" (Ps. xxx. 9.) "Wilt thou show 



178 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

wonders unto the dead ? Shall the dead arise and 
praise thee? Shall thy loving- kindness be declared 
in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? 
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark ? and 
thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" 
(Ps. lxxxviii. 10-12.) There is no work there. 
"The dead know not anything; neither have they 
any more a reward. There is no work, nor desire, 
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither 
thou goest." (Eccl. ix. 5, 10.) As late as Heze- 
kiah we have the same gloomy view of death. 
"The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot cele- 
brate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot 
hope for thy truth." (Is. xxxviii. 18.) 

Along by the side of this dark view of death 
there is a growing consciousness of the great privi- 
leges involved in their covenant relation to God. 
The shadow of sin, bringing death, gives way 
slowly to the light of redemption. Death had 
appeared only as a curse. Now they begin to 
realize that the covenant reaches beyond death, and 
will at last destroy it. So running along with this 
gloomy line of passages, there is another, cheerful 
and hopeful. But we must be careful not to read 
all of our New Testament light into them. The 
authors did not understand the full import of their 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 79 

own words. It is, therefore, the more interesting 
to watch the throes through which the higher faith 
came into existence. 

In the time of the Pilgrimage there was a belief 
that through conjurors the spirits of the dead might 
be brought back, and laws were passed against the 
superstitious practice (Lev. xix. 31; xx. 6; Deut. 
xviii. 11.) In the days of Saul there was the famous 
Witch of Endor, who was believed to be able to 
consult the dead. » 

Job often refers to Sheol as a place of mere 
existence. Translated grave, his words do not 
imply even so much as that (iii. 22; v. 26; x. 17; 
xvii. 1; xxi. 32). He asks desparingly, "Man 
dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the 
ghost, and where is he?" (xiv. 10.) "If a man 
die, shall he live again?" But conscious of life 
that cannot perish he adds, "All the days of my 
appointed time will I wait till my change come. 
Thou shal^: call and I will answer thee : thou wilt 
have a desire to the work of thy hands." (Vs. 14, 
15.) Then the stronger faith gleams out for a 
moment: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and 
that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth ; 
and though after my skin worms destroy this body, 



l8o EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

yet without my flesh shall I see God."* (xix. 

25-270 

Hannah may have had some faint ray of the fact 
of a resurrection when she said, " The Lord killeth 
and maketh alive" (1 Sam. ii. 6), but she was 
thinking more directly of the extremes of dis- 
tress, rather than of death, from which the Lord 
might deliver. 

In the Psalms the conflict of the old and new 
faith is most manifest. If David said, "In death 
there is no remembrance of thee," he said also of 
himself as well as prophetically of Christ, "Thou 
wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt thou 
suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" (Ps. xvi. 
10). If he said, "Shall the dust give thee 
thanks?" he said also, "As forme I will behold 

thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when 

— . — * . 

*This passage has long been in dispute among scholars. 
Oehler says, "Notwithstanding the multitude of erroneous ex- 
planations which have been offered, the only view which can be 
accepted as doing justice to the words is that which regards the 
passage as expressing the hope of a manifestation of God to be 
made in Job's favor after his death." "Still the passage, even 
according to this explanation which we have adopted, speaks 
only of a momentary beholding, which, however, presupposes 
a continuance of Job's communion with God after death." 
Old Testament Theology, g 248. 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. l8l 

I awake with thy likeness " (Ps. xvii. 15). "God 
will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol ' ' 
(Ps. xlix. 15). "Thou shalt guide me with thy 
counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory" (Ps. 
lxxiii. 24). "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at 
thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore " 
(Ps. xvi. n). " Surely goodness and mercy shall 
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell 
in the house of the L,ord forever" (Ps. xxiii. 6). 
In his bereavement he consoles himself with the 
hope of a happy reunion with the deceased child 
in the spirit world. 

If David had seen all that we may find in his 
words he could not have written the former class 
of passages; or if he had thought of Sheol as a 
place only of darkness and gloom, and of the 
future life as simple, bare existence, he could not 
have written the latter. We find the solution to 
the seeming inconsistency in the fact that his life 
fell in the transition period. 

The idea of a future life, which struggled for its 
existence in the time of David, obtained in the 
following ages a more definite character and a 
firmer hold in the religious consciousness. In the 
time of the later prophets the view of Sheol had 
greatly changed. The doctrine of the resurrection 



l82 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

of the body became a common faith. Though 
Hezekiah still speaks so gloomily of death in the 
time of Isaiah, that prophet in exultant hope ex- 
claims: "Thy dead men shall live: together with 
my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, 
ye that dwell in the dust." (Is. xxvi. 19.) Kze- 
kiel based his vision of a national resurrection 
upon the general belief in the resurrection of the 
dead. u O, ye dry bones, hear the word of the 
Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; 
* Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and 
ye shall live.' " (Bz. xxvii. 1-8.) Hosea also used 
the common faith to hold up the hope of a redemp- 
tion of the nation. U I will ransom them from the 
power of the grave. I will redeem them from 
death." (xiii. 14.) Neither of these prophets 
spoke directly of the resurrection of the dead. 
They foretold certain great redemptive national 
events. They drew their bold imagery from the 
resurrection which must have become not only a 
general but a very familiar idea. Daniel speaks 
certainly of the final resurrection and advan- 
ces to the conception of a future punishment of 
the ungodly. "And many of them that sleep in 
the dust shall awake; some to everlasting life, and 
some to everlasting shame and contempt." (xii. 2.) 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 83 

In the period succeeding the close of Prophecy, 
the Jews began to philosophize upon the doctrine 
of immortality which they had inherited from their 
fathers. In the Apocryphal book of Wisdom the 
fact of an endless life is based upon the original 
creation. "God created man to be immortal, and 
made him to be the image of his own eternity. 
Nevertheless, through envy of the devil, came 
death into the world." "But the souls of the 
righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall 
no torment touch them. In the sight of the 
unw T ise they seemed to die, and their departure is 
taken for misery, and their going from us to be 
utter destruction; but they are in peace. For 
though they be punished in the sight of men, yet 
is their hope full of immortality. n (ii. 23, 24; iii. 
1-4.) The strength of the common hope is touch- 
ingly illustrated in the story of the seven brethren 
and their mother who suffered persecution under 
Antiochus. After the persecutors had put the first 
of the brothers to death they made a "mocking- 
stock" of the second. "When they had pulled off 
the skin of his head with the hair, they asked him, 
'Wilt thou eat before thou be punished throughout 
every member of thy body?' But he answered in 
his own language and said, ' No. ' And when he was 



184 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

at the last gasp he said, ( Thou like a fury takest us 
out of this present life, but the King of the world 
shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto 
everlasting life.' " (2 Mac. vii. 1-42.) The doctrine 
of retribution, reward in Paradise for the right- 
eous, and punishment in the fire of Gehenna for 
the wicked, that was commonly held in the time 
of Christ, grew into clearness and distinctness dur- 
ing this age. 

We have traced the development of the idea of 
a future life, as it has left its impressions in the 
sacred books, from a belief in a mere existence 
among the fathers in Sheol up to a strong hope in 
a resurrection of the body and future rewards. A 
slow unfolding of the truth in the consciousness of - 
the people is not what we might have expected, 
but it is what we have found. We ought not to 
be surprised. No doctrine was revealed at once in 
all its fulness. God made His revelations as the 
public mind was prepared to receive them. This 
doctrine of a future life was subject to the common 
law. 

We may go back from this review of the history 
of the doctrine to study the evidence upon which 
the faith rested. 

The Jewish belief was not the product of phil- 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 85 

osophic speculations. There is no evidence of 
any attempt, before the latest centuries, to reason 
upon the subject. In the age just before Christ, 
the Alexandrine philosophy extended its influence 
to Jerusalem, and tried to plant the religious hope 
upon purely rational grounds. But when they 
had drifted away from their revelations and 
spiritual intuitions, they fell into uncertainty, and 
the skeptical Sadducees sprang up. 

At first their faith was perhaps little more than 
the universal instinctive belief, which subsequently 
gathered about itself the great truths which neces- 
sarily implied for the righteous at least an endless 
life. 

God revealed himself as the Creator of man. He 
had indicated the dignity of man's nature by the 
symbolic act of breathing into his nostrils. He 
had made man in His own image, and given him 
power over every creature. Sin had changed the 
relation, but had not wholly defaced the image of 
the Maker. Man was still the object of God's care. 
Communion with God was still in some degree 
maintained. A being of such exalted dignity and 
powers could not be destined merely for the brief 
day of a single individual's life. The great truths 
divinely revealed unfolded in the consciousness of 



1 86 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the Jewish people, and brought out according to 
the divine intention the assurance of immortality. 
The truth thus developed was as certainly and fully 
divine as if it had been immediately revealed. In 
this we have an instance and illustration of the 
combination of revelation and the evolution of 
faith. 

There were given from time to time special 
evidences and pledges which, although not wholly 
appreciated in their own times, come to us in 
their fullest significance. 

Enoch was translated before the flood, and Elijah 
in the time of the kings. Samuel in response to 
the call of Saul through the Witch of Endor came 
from the spirit world, and announced the fate of 
the dishonored king. Elisha raised the dead son 
of the Shunamite. These cases were distinct 
proofs of continued existence after death, and the 
translations were at the same time types of the 
resurrection of the body. 

It is true that we cannot verify the miracles by 
direct examination of the facts, but the accounts 
come to us in connection with a dispensation con- 
firmed by numerous miracles. They are related to 
us by inspired men, whose statements are ap- 
proved and confirmed by other inspired men whose 



PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 87 

claims are open to our closest examination. We 
fully believe therefore that the events took place 
as narrated, and they become to us of great eviden- 
tial value. 

The Old Testament dispensation was preparatory 
and typical of the Christian. The events and 
utterances of faith, as well as the direct predic- 
tions, were prophetic. There was meaning in their 
words and actions which they did not comprehend. 
The New Testament is an inspired commentary 
upon the Old. From it we can go back and find 
the truth which they either wholly overlooked or 
partially understood. David's words, "Thou wilt 
not leave 'my soul in Sheol," becomes a prophecy 
of the resurrection of Christ, and thus a pledge of 
our own. His hope that God would guide him by 
His counsels and then receive him to glory becomes 
to us a divine promise. His premonition of fulness 
of joy at the right hand of God becomes to us an 
assurance. 

The Old Testament, therefore, comes to us as a 
word from God, answering the question which itself 
propounds, "If a man die, shall he live again?" 

"I am the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob. " But he is not the God of the dead, but of 
the living. 



CHAPTER X. 

PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

TN the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Apostles 
-■* we have the fact of a future life not only asserted, 
but richly explained. The pages of the New Test- 
ament are luminous with the truth concerning 
human destiny. Nowhere else do we find so much 
instruction on our state after death. It is here we 
reach our greatest certainty. For this reason, 
among others, Christ is said to have "brought life 
and immortality to light." 

It is through the New, as we have already 
observed, the Old Testament obtains its greatest 
importance. Christ lifted the veil and showed its 
deeper meanings. He pointed out the vein of 
prophecy running through it, and by his interpreta- 
tion we find a significance in the words and actions 
of the ancient Jews of which they themselves did 
not dream. We may without violence obtain 
from their inspired utterances proofs which wholly 
escaped them. The books of the Bible become one 
book, the Book above all others in respect to our 

duty here and our existence hereafter. 

(188) 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 89 

Christ was not in the ordinary sense a philoso- 
pher. He did not employ the common philosophic 
methods. He did not appeal to the philosophic, 
but to the religious reason. He did not aim to call 
out the logical faculty, but the spiritual intuition. 
His manner was in striking contrast with all the 
philosophers, and he taught with strange authority. 
We cannot look, therefore, in His teachings for 
proofs of immortality, such as the philosophers 
offered. He does not speak to the reason independ- 
ent of religion, but to the reason swayed by relig- 
ion. The Christian finds assurance where the sim- 
ple rationalist sees nothing. Christ makes men 
feel their immortality through their religious con- 
sciousness, while those devoid of it are as insensible 
to it as the blind are to the brightest light. But 
there are facts connected with Christ's life and 
teaching which carry a great deal of force to what 
theologians would call the natural understanding. 

Christ offered only one argument for a future life, 
and that was a vindication of it against the Sad- 
ducees. This sect denied the existence of angels 
and spirits and the resurrection ' of the body. 
Josephus calls them a philosophical sect. This is 
doubtless correct as to their starting point, but in 
the time of Christ they were rather politicians and 



190 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

opponents of the innovations of the Pharisees. 
They had fallen back into an extreme conservatism. 
They acknowledged the divine authority of the 
sacred books, but holding in special regard the 
Mosaic law, they gave rise to the common opinion 
that they accepted only the Pentateuch. They 
were driven into the inconsistency of receiving 
divine books and yet believing that God took no 
interest in the world. Christ met them on the 
common ground of the sacred books. He appeals 
to the authority of the Scriptures which they ad- 
mitted. He proves from the relation of man to 
God that man is immortal, and from this infers the 
resurrection of the body. God calls Himself the 
God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, long after 
these patriarchs had passed away from earth; but 
God is not a God of the dead but of the living, and 
therefore these patriarchs live. If the spirits sur- 
vive the bodies, there is no special difficulty in 
believing that they will at some time reanimate 
their bodies. 

Christ taught on His own personal authority. 
He claimed to be the Christ, the Son of God, God 
himself. He claimed, therefore, the authority of 
God. He asked a verification of those claims. 
He proposed four tests. To the Jews He offered 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 191 

their own Scriptures. u Go search the Scriptures, 
and they testify of me." To the disciples also He 
appealed to the prophecies. He proposed, at other 
times, His miracles. " If I do not the works of 
my Father, believe me not; but if I do, though 
ye believe not me, believe the works." "The 
works that I do in my Father's name, they bear 
witness of me." "The works which the Father 
has given me to finish, the same works that I do, 
bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me." 
He appealed also to the power of the truth. " My 
words are spirit and life." "If the Son makes 
you free, ye shall be free indeed." "Every man 
that hath learned of the Father cometh unto me." 
" He that is of God heareth God's word." He ap- 
pealed, finally, to His own character. "Who of 
you convinceth me of sin?" The fulfilled pro- 
phecies, the wonderful miracles, the divine power 
of His teaching, and His perfect character, united 
to confirm His claim and prove Him the Son of 
God. What He taught must be accepted upon 
His own authority. What He reveals about our 
future we must believe, because He said so. We 
must either accept His claims or regard the whole 
history as a myth which gathered itself about the 
life of an otherwise insignificant Jew. 



192 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

There is no question that the Christ of the Gos- 
pels taught a future life for His own people, but it 
has been said that He taught only a conditional 
immortality. Did He teach that all men shall live 
after death? 

The final extinction of the wicked has been in- 
ferred from the teaching both of nature and of 
Christianity. Sin disorganizes. It destroys na- 
tions, breaks up associations, alienates friends, and 
induces disease and death. It creates conflicts be- 
tween the mental powers, weakens thought, and 
cripples the will. These facts are thought to indi- 
cate the final destruction of the soul. The Scrip- 
tures say that u the wages of sin is death," and 
" the soul that sinneth it shall die." Everlasting 
life and immortality are the rewards of the right- 
eous. Everlasting life is understood by those who 
hold to a conditional immortality as continued ex- 
istence, and everlasting death as a cessation of be- 
ing. Did Christ teach that the wicked are anni- 
hilated at death? 

The Jews at the beginning of the Christian era 
believed that the wicked and pious alike are im- 
mortal. The Pharisees held the common doctrine. 
Josephus states it thus: "They also believe that 
souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 93 

under the earth there will be rewards and punish- 
ments, according as they have lived virtuously or 
viciously in this life; and the latter are to be de- 
tained in everlasting prison, but that the former 
shall have power to rise and live again."* The 
Essenes also taught the immortality of all souls. 
Only the Sadducees believed that the soul dies with 
the body. Christ took the side of the Pharisees in 
this controversy. He adopts the language of his 
day. He takes no pains to correct the common 
faith. His language and manner implied its essen- 
tial correctness. He also directly taught the con- 
tinued conscious existence of all. In the parable of 
the rich man and Lazarus, the two represent the 
two great classes. The rich man was as fully and 
consciously alive as Lazarus, and each received his 
proper retribution. Christ spake of the fire that is 
never quenched, and the worm that never dies. 
He warned repeatedly of the danger of hell-fire. 
The wicked are to go away into everlasting pun- 
ishment. If the wicked are to be annihilated,, 
there is no meaning in these expressions. If one 
ceases to exist, the worm and the fire have for him 
no significance. If there is annihilation, there 
cannot be everlasting punishment, for there can. 

*Antiq., b. 14, c. I, s. 3. 



194 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

be no punishment without existence — when one 
ceases to be, his punishment must necessarily end. 

Peter tells of the spirits in prison, held there for 
their disobedience in the days of Noah. Whatever 
doubt there may be as to the time of the preaching 
to them, there is none as to the time of their dis- 
obedience and of their confinement in prison in the 
other world. They were wicked spirits, and in 
the days of the Apostles their punishment had con- 
tinued through three thousand years. 

John tells us also of some the smoke of whose 
torments ascend forever and ever. 

Christ made a distinction between simple exist- 
ence and life. He taught that life is a proper 
relation to God. "This is eternal life, that they 
might know Thee, the only true God." " He that 
hath the Sou hath everlasting life." "I am come 
that they may have life." " Your life is hid with 
Christ in God." u He that heareth my words and 
believeth on Him that sent me, shall not come 
into condemnation, but is passed from death unto 
life." "The hour is coming, and now is, when the 
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
they that hear shall live." He calls those who are 
out of that relation to God dead. To believe is to 
4 'pass from death to life." Those who are dead 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 95 

through indifference to God shall hear His voice 
and live. The same idea runs through the writ- 
ings of the Apostles. "You hath he quickened 
who were dead in trespass and in sins." "Having 
their understanding darkened, being alienated from 
the life of God." "Awake thou that sleepest and 
arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee 
light." "Twice dead," said Jude, because they 
had gone back from life into a state of death. "A 
name to live," said John, "but art dead." This 
was not new language. It had come down from 
the creation. " In the day thou eatest thereof thou 
shalt surely die." Adam did die the very hour of 
transgression. He did not cease to exist even on 
earth, but he lost his spiritual power. Life in the 
Biblical sense is a spiritual principle which gives 
existence its highest value, and death is the want 
of that principle. The whole force of the argu- 
ment for a conditional immortality lies in a mis- 
conception of the Scriptural meanings of everlast- 
ing life and of death. 

Christ brings out the old argument, based on 
man's relation to God, in a new light. God is not 
only our Creator, but is also our Father. We are 
the objects of his special care. We are the children 
of God. We are made partakers of the divine 



196 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

nature. We are renewed in the image of God. 
We are taken into fellowship with Him. We are 
lifted into union with Christ and receive His life as 
the principle of our life. u Christ is our life," and, 
therefore, "death is our gain." We are heirs of 
God and joint heirs with Christ. Those whom He 
so loves and dignifies, for whom He cares, to whom 
He imparts a divine life, cannot perish. We have 
in us a germ of immortality that death cannot 
touch. In making us feel God's nearness to us, 
Christ makes us feel our immortality. It is the 
conscious inner life that makes the Christian cer- 
tain of life beyond death. While Christ taught 
immortality for all, He gives pledges, guarantees 
and positive assurances to the righteous. 

The New Testament adds to its teaching a num- 
ber of examples. 

It gives a number of instances of the manifes- 
tation of angels — spirits independent of matter. 
These show that mind can exist and be cognizant of 
the facts of the world and can reveal itself without 
a material body. As soon as we are convinced of 
this, we find little difficulty in believing in the 
future existence of the soul. 

It gives an account of the transfiguration, at 
which Moses and Elijah appeared and talked with 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW" TESTAMENT. 1 97 

Christ about His approaching death. Elijah had 
been translated. Moses had died and his body been 
buried on Mt. Nebo more than a thousand years 
before. Here were two persons, one with and the 
other without a body, who had been living a num- 
ber of centuries in another world. 

The account of the transfiguration comes down 
to us in three of the Gospels. It is referred to as 
a well known fact in one of the Epistles accredited 
to Peter. There is no doubt as to its being one of 
the earliest traditions of the Church, current long 
before the death of the Apostles Peter, James and 
John. If Mark wrote his gospel under the direc- 
tion of Peter, we have in it Peter's personal testi- 
mony. If the story had been false, the Apostles, 
while they lived, would have corrected it. Chris- 
tians believed it upon the authority of these eye 
witnesses. Neander pronounces u the attempts 
that have been made to resolve it into a mythical 
narrative absurd.''* The theory of a subjective 
phenomenon supposes the improbable fact that three 
should fall at the same time into the same wonder- 
ful mental condition, and also robs it of all the 
importance in the life of Christ which is clearly 
indicated in it. If a vision at all, it must have 
*Life of Christ, §185. 



198 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

been miraculously produced, and so far as regards 
the presence of the two saints, had objective reali- 
ties. There were three witnesses, and these among 
the most competent of the twelve. Their substan- 
tial agreement in relating it is shown by the agree- 
ment of the written accounts. They could not 
have been mistaken, and their whole lives show 
that they were not false. 

The New Testament gives account of a number 
of resurrections from the dead. Besides the evi- 
dence which they bring to the whole system, and 
thus to the teaching concerning a future life, they 
bear special testimony in showing us instances of 
the fact. Three of the miracles were wrought by 
Christ. They rise in importance. The first was 
that of the centurion's daughter, who had just 
died. She was regarded as dead, and the people 
misunderstanding Christ's words, laughed in de- 
rision when He said that she was sleeping. The 
miracle was wrought in a private house, in the 
presence only of the friends and of three disciples. 
The circumstances might have left room for doubt 
as to the fact of a miracle. The next was the 
resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain. 
This was more public. It took place in the streets 
and in the presence of the funeral cortege. But 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 99 

in that hot country, where interment speedily fol- 
lowed death, this might have been supposed to 
have been only a case of suspended animation. 
Still, it would have been strange that life should 
return at a simple touch, without any further re- 
storatives. In the last case there was no possible 
place for doubt. Lazarus had been dead four 
days. His death was known. He was raised in 
the presence of a large company. It was done at 
Bethany, in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. 
It was immediately published, and was thoroughly 
investigated by His enemies. The fact was an- 
nounced repeatedly, and written accounts circu- 
lated in the community where it occurred. Public 
attention in deep interest was attracted. If it had 
been possible the miracle would have been denied, 
but it was not. 

Matthew tells us that at the crucifixion "the 
graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints 
which slept arose and came out of the graves after 
His resurrection, and went into the city and ap- 
peared unto many." The genuineness of this 
passage has been called in question on internal 
grounds. It seems to have been inserted into the 
midst of the narrative. The fact is not mentioned 
by any of the other writers. But it has the best 



200 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

manuscript authority, and we accept it as part of 
the original Gospel, having all the authority of the 
Apostolic testimony. 

A young woman at Joppa was raised by Peter. 
"She was sick and died, whom when they had 
washed they laid in an upper chamber." "The 
widows weeping showed the coats and garments 
which she had made." " Peter put them all forth 
and kneeled down and prayed, and turning to the 
body said, Tabitha, arise, and he gave her his hand 
and lifted her up, and when he had called the 
saints and widows he presented her alive." 

At Troas Paul is said to have raised the young 
man, Eutychus, who fell from the window and 
"was taken up dead." It is related by Luke, the 
physician, who was the traveling companion of 
Paul. 

These miracles come to us as fully accredited as 
any part of the gospel story, and must be believed 
or rejected with it. 

The greatest of all the resurrections, and that 
which has for us preeminent importance, is the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the chief corner- 
stone of the Christian faith and hope. It demands, 
therefore, a more careful study. 

That we may have the argument in the clearest 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 201 

light, we will recall the principal facts upon which 
it rests. 

Christ's life and character are historical facts. 
John Stuart Mill, a great but unsympathetic 
scholar, gives, with some disparaging remarks on 
John's gospel, his mature judgment, together with 
something of the reason for it. u It is the God in- 
carnate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, 
who, being idealized, has taken so great and salu- 
tary a hold on the modern mind; and whatever 
else is taken away from us by rational criticism, 
Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more un- 
like all his precursors than all his followers, even 
those who had the direct benefit of his personal 
teaching. It is of no use to say that Christy as ex- 
hibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we 
know not how much of what is admirable has been 
superadded by the tradition of his followers. The 
tradition of his followers suffices to insert any num- 
ber of marvels, and may have inserted all the mira- 
cles which he is reputed to have wrought. But 
who among the disciples of Jesus or among their 
proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings 
ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and char- 
acter revealed in the Gospels ? Certainly not the 
fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, 
9* 



202 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally 
different sort; still less the early Christian writers, 
in whom nothing is more evident than that the 
good in them was all derived from this higher 
source." . . . " But about the life and sayings of 
Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, com- 
bined with profundity of insight, which, if we 
abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific 
precision when something very different was aimed 
at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in 
the estimation of those who have no belief in His 
inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of 
sublime genius of whom our species can boast."* 
The words of depreciation of the Church and of 
parts of the history, written in this connection and 
elsewhere, make Mill's testimony to the sublime 
character of Christ all the more important. If we 
deny with Deism the miracles, we have left in 
Christ Himself the most inexplicable and greatest 
of all miracles. The resurrection is in perfect 
harmony with such a life. 

Another fact as unquestionable as any in His 
life, is that of His crucifixion at the time of the 
Passover, when Jerusalem was crowded with visi- 
tors not only from Palestine, but various parts of 

* Three Essays, p. 254. 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 203 

the world. This was a part of the very earliest 
tradition, and was publicly preached everywhere 
from the very beginning of the Christian move- 
ment. 

Another fact is that He was really dead. His 
enemies took special pains to assure themselves of 
His death. The soldier's test would have destroyed 
life if it had not already been gone. 

Another fact equally certain is that He was 
buried, and the grave was in the hands of the 
enemies. 

The disappearance of the body, another fact in- 
disputable, cannot be explained except by its 
resurrection. The enemies did not remove it, and 
the feeble, disheartened, demoralized and disbanded 
disciples could not. These facts are so clearly 
established, that the theory of a swoon has been 
proposed to evade the evidence of a resurrection, 
but that supposition cannot stand before the evi- 
dence of His death. 

Another fact fully established is that the dis- 
ciples, in a few days after the crucifixion, began to 
preach that Christ had risen. A very great and 
sudden revolution took place in their feelings. 
The timid, cowardly apostles at once became 
heroes. The Peter who had denied Him, in that 



204 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

same city pronounced severe denunciations against 
those who with wicked hands had crucified the 
Ivord of glory. Thousands were convinced of the 
truth and were added to the followers of the lately 
despised Nazarene. From Jerusalem they went 
everywhere proclaiming the fact of Christ's resur- 
rection ; and during the life-time of those present 
in Jerusalem when it took place, and from that 
very assembly thousands were converted to the 
new faith. 

Another fact beyond dispute is that two days 
commemorative of His resurrection, the one weekly 
and the other annual, began in the time of the 
Apostles to be observed everywhere in the Church. 
Jews with all their inherited feelings of sanctity 
for the Sabbath, in common with Gentile converts, 
commenced observing the first day as the Lord's 
day. 

Another fact above question is that from the 
very beginning there was the profoundest convic- 
tion of its truth, and the facts establishing it were 
carefully preserved among all Christians. 

Another fact admitted by the most radical his- 
toric criticism, and therefore denied by none, is 
that Paul wrote Romans, the two Corinthians, and 
Galatians. In these letters he expresses his own 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 205 

perfect faith in it. This is of greater value when 
we remember that he was in Jerusalem soon after 
it occurred, was high in the counsels of his nation, 
and acquainted with all the facts in the possession 
of the rulers in regard to Christianity, of which he 
was at first a fierce persecutor. In these epistles 
he appeals to the fact of Christ's resurrection as 
well known and universally admitted among 
Christians. He tells us that he had several con- 
ferences with the Apostles who had seen the risen 
Lord. He briefly reviews the evidence — not dwell- 
ing on it because facts so well known required 
only the most rapid mention. He says that Christ 
was seen of Peter, then of the twelve, then of above 
five hundred, then of James, then of all the Apos- 
tles, and last of all by himself. These epistles 
were all written within thirty years, at the very 
longest, after the crucifixion. 

Another fact that cannot be disproved is that the 
Gospels, whether authentic or not, give us the 
facts as they were preached from the beginning of 
the Church on down through the first century. 
These facts were transmitted by public preaching 
to the age when these books were certainly ac- 
cepted as genuine. Besides the allusions in the 
writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp 



206 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

and the Shepherd, we have the direct and extended 
statements of Justin Martyr, placing this fact be- 
yond dispute. 

The testimony to Christ's resurrection, which 
was repeatedly given under the most solemn cir- 
cumstances and sealed with the blood of the wit- 
nesses, is that Christ after His resurrection showed 
Himself to Mary Magdalene in the garden about 
sunrise; immediately after to a number of women 
as they were returning to the city, and permitted 
them to embrace His feet; then to Peter, but the 
place is not given; then to the two disciples going 
to Emmaus; then to the ten disciples, with whom 
He not only talked, but by whom He was handled, 
and in whose presence He ate bread and fish. These 
manifestations were all made on the day of the res- 
urrection. On the next first day He showed him- 
self to the eleven. Some days after He showed 
himself to seven on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. 
Soon after He was seen by the five hundred. Then 
He was seen by James in a private interview, as He 
had formerly been by Peter. Then at last by the 
disciples, as He went with them to Mt. Olivet, from 
which He ascended. 

This is the evidence as it has come down to us. 
In all important respects it has been correctly re- 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 207 

ported from the lips of the witnesses. It has never 
been successfully impeached, nor its force fairly 
evaded. 

The most recent and plausible effort to get rid 
of the facts is Strauss' s celebrated mythical theory. 
The disciples had some mental hallucinations which 
served as a basis for the myths which grew up into 
the story as we now have it. The theory necessa- 
rily implies prepossession, definite expectancy. But 
all the facts show that such expectancy was en- 
tirely wanting. They had been so prepossessed with 
another idea that they misunderstood His predic- 
tions of His resurrection, and His death filled them 
with the deepest despondency. They saw Him when 
they least expected it, and sometimes were slow 
in recognizing Him. In His manifestations He de- 
livered to them long discourses, walked with them 
frequently, and even took food with them. He 
was at much pains to remove their doubts and 
convince them that He was not a vision but an ob- 
jective reality. The theory of vision ignores all 
these facts. Myths are of slow growth. It re- 
quires ages for them to mature. But the story of 
the resurrection was fully completed a number of 
years before Paul wrote his epistles. It was full 
grown long before the first thirty years had elapsed. 



208 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

It started, so far as the evidence goes, immediately 
after the event occurred. This theory, so preten- 
tious and specious, has been abandoned by almost 
all scholars. 

The preaching of the resurrection introduced 
new life into the world. A revolution was com- 
menced which, both as to means and success, is 
without a parallel. A germ was planted at Jerusa- 
lem by Galilean fishermen that transformed the 
society of Europe, and has sQjit its blessing down 
through eighteen centuries. The Church in all its 
grand proportions and its .splendid work was 
founded upon it. The result which followed 
from it is the highest confirmation and surest 
testimonial. 

No event in history is sustained by a stronger 
array of facts than those proving the resurrection 
of Christ. This has been admitted even by ration- 
tionalists. We must accept it, or give up faith in 
historical narratives. 

The resurrection of Christ is a proof of our 
future existence, because it is the divine confirma- 
tion of all His teaching. It puts beyond doubt His 
claims to be the Messiah. It is also a proof be- 
cause of His relation to the race. He is in organic 
union with the family of men. He was one of us, 



PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 209 

but was also our Head. He was representative, 
and acted for all. Because He lives we shall live 
also. The Christian, through Paul, before the fact 
of assured life raises the exultant shout: "Thanks 
be unto God who giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ. " 



CHAPTER XL 

SOUL AND LIFE. 

TT7E come now to consider the evidence to be ob- 

* ^ tained from the nature of the soul. Our 

study must necessarily, for several chapters, be 

metaphysical. 

We descend from the bright, clear light of Chris- 
tianity to the dust and smoke of modern science. 
We do not seek positive proofs, but safeguards 
against doubts and fears awakened by scientific 
experiments and speculations. We desire to see 
how many of the old fundamental faiths remain to 
us, and how far the old proofs and evidence have 
been influenced by the new facts. We commence 
with the relation of the soul and life. 

The materialist believes that matter is the sole 
substance, and that material things are the only 
realities. He believes, therefore, that mechanical, 
chemical, vital and mental phenomena are pro- 
ducts of material forces. These phenomena are 
manifestations of the same principle in different 
spheres of activity. The mental and vital belong 

to the same agent. If the soul is nothing but the 

(210) 



SOUL AND LIFE. 211 

vital principle, and the vital is the result of the 
material organization, then when the body dies 
life and soul perish together. The argument is 
not conclusive until every step has been proved. 
If he fails to establish the identity of the vital and 
mental principles, his argument fails. 

Some dualists have agreed with the materialist 
in the opinion that the mental and vital are only 
different phases of the same agent. President 
Porter, who believes in the immortality of the 
soul and stands up vigorously and firmly against 
materialism, states the doctrine in regard to the 
relation of the soul to life in these words: "The 
force or agent which at first originates the bodily 
organism and actuates its functions, at last mani- 
fests itself as the soul in higher forms of activity, 
viz. : in knowledge, feeling and will. In other 
words, the principle of life and of psychical activ- 
ity are one."* To this the materialist can sub- 
scribe. 

The most ancient Greek philosophers known 
to us were hylozoistic, and knew of no agent or 
principle separate from the common life of the 
world. Every form of motion or action came from 
life. Thus Thales ascribed the attraction of the 
* Human Intellect, p. 36. 



212 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

magnet to its life. The world was regarded as a 
great organism, like a plant or an animal. Anaxa- 
goras began to distinguish between the Creator 
and the world, but he used the idea of God to ex- 
plain what he could not account for by natural 
forces. The Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, 
were atheists, and ascribed the cosmos to mechan- 
ical principles. All of them regarded the soul as 
a function of life — the Hylozoists as the animating 
principle manifesting itself in man through men- 
tal phenomena, the Atomists as a result from the 
vital human organism. 

The tendency started with Anaxagoras was de- 
veloped by Socrates. The distinction between the 
soul and body was clearly recognized, and was re- 
peatedly discussed and illustrated by that great 
Athenian philosopher. Plato taught the pre-exis- 
tence of souls and the ethereal nature of their 
essence. He divided the human soul into three 
parts corresponding to vegetable, animal and mental 
phenomena; but he wavered as to the relation of 
the two former to the body, sometimes maintaining 
that they survived with the intellectual, and some- 
times that they perished with the body. Aristotle, 
while holding to the common belief in its principal 
facts, made a wide departure in regarding the 



SOUL AND LIFE. 213 

nous as superadded to the lower elements and 
capable of existence after their destruction. These 
ancient philosophers of the Socratic and pre-So- 
cratic schools, so far as they have left evidence of 
their speculations on this subject, supposed that 
the soul is the animating principle, and they spoke 
of the soul of plants and animals, as well as of men. 
Aristotle is the only one who seems to have made 
in any respect a distinction between the higher 
faculties and the soul, or lower mental powers, the 
entelechy of the body. 

There are expressions in the Old Testament 
which indicate that the Hebrews, as the Greeks, 
believed that animals and plants as well as men 
have souls, and they are supposed to have regarded 
the soul as the animating principle. But the high- 
est authorities in this branch of theological learn- 
ing are not agreed as to whether they believed in 
trichotomy or dichotomy. Both views are sus- 
tained by numerous passages. * 

Among- the school-men there was no special inter- 
est felt in this subject, and there were not many 
utterances upon it. Thomas Aquinas, with Aris- 

* As it was a matter of science and not religion, different 
opinions may have been held in different ages, and found ex- 
pression in the sacred books. We should no more go to the 
Bible to settle a question in psychology, than in astronomy. 



214 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

totle, calls the soul the entelechy of the body, but 
ascribes to the same soul rational, animal and vege- 
table functions. William Occam is opposed to the 
identification of the intellectual, the sensitiva 
anima and the organizing principle of the body. 
He held to three powers. Eckhart, the pantheistic 
mystic, said clearly that the soul is the vitalizing 
principle of the body. 

Descartes produced a revolution in philosophy, 
and French philosophers say that the publication 
of his book on Method was the birth-day of mod- 
ern philosophy. He made the broadest distinction 
between matter, whose essence is extension, and 
spirit, whose essence is thought. One of the great 
problems for the Cartesians was the possibility and 
manner of influence between mind and matter. 
"Occasional Causes" and u Pre-established Har- 
mony" were theories proposed for its solution. 
Spinoza offered his noted scheme of pantheism. 
The Cartesians, after Descartes himself, believed 
that the vital belonged to the material, and attri- 
buted to it, through reflex influence, the instinct 
of animals. The brute was an automaton. With 
them the vital and mental were entirely distinct 
agents. 

Leibnitz thought that the soul is the governing 



SOUL AND LIFE. 215 

monad or substantial centre of the body, control- 
ling the monads of the body, or furnishing the rea- 
son for physical changes, though it was not done 
by a direct influence, but according to the pre- 
arranged harmony. 

Modern materialists have revived, in one phase 
or another, the old Grecian hylozoistic doctrines. 
Voltaire could not think that the soul was an un- 
extended substance in the brain, and preferred to 
consider it a mere abstraction or personification of 
a peculiar psychical force. De la Metrie, from per- 
sonal observation upon himself during an attack 
of fever, concluded that mental actions are the 
results of bodily organization, or that the mind is 
a function of the body. Prof. Huxley attempts to 
reduce mental activity to reflex influence. 

Ulrici, among more recent Germans, is a decided 
and strong opponent of materialism. He wrote his- 
great work, "God and Man," to demonstrate that 
the soul is an independent existence, but he is 
not sure that it is not identical with the vital force. 

Modern science, by means of the microscope and 
the study of fossils from the remotest ages, has 
brought new light to the study of life. A new- 
branch has established for itself a place among the 
sciences. Biology has discovered new facts in re- 



2l6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

gard to the lower forms of life, and new relations 
between the different orders of being. It has fur- 
nished strong support to the doctrine of evolution, 
the greatest and most important of all the theories 
offered in recent years to the scientific world — a 
theory w T hich has threatened to overturn our most 
fundamental beliefs. Biology has reopened the 
question, Is the. soul the principle of life? It is 
not a question vital to the belief in the future ex- 
istence of the soul, but it has assumed a new im- 
portance. 

President Porter has given a number of reasons 
for regarding: the vital and mental agents as one: 

i. The vital phenomena are antecedent to the 
psychical. Some months have elapsed after the 
first living activities, before there is any manifes- 
tation of the distinctively mental. The first dis- 
play of mental power is of the most rudimental 
character. In connection with the first appearance 
of the psychical power, there are no indications of 
the beginning of a new agent. The vital and 
mental are blended so far as observation, both 
within and without, can reach. If the soul is a 
distinct principle, when does it begin? If it begins 
with life, it is very strange that it should remain so 
long dormant. 



# SOUI, AND LIFE. 217 

In reply to this argument it may be said that it 
does not prove that the two phenomena come from 
the same agent, but only a close relationship be- 
tween their sources. All the facts adduced are 
equally accordant with the theory of two principles 
in mutual dependence. It is a well-known fact that 
mind is dependent upon life as developed in the 
nervous system, and the same agent and a different 
agent must alike wait for its development. Both 
theories have the same explanation of the rudi- 
mental character of the first mental actions. In 
either case the condition of the nervous system de- 
termines them. There are the same difficulties to 
both. Neither can explain the fact that the soul 
is so long without a consciousness of itself. If the 
soul is the vital agent, why is it so long dormant as 
soul? This first reason, therefore, does not prove 
the identity. 

2. When life and soul are fully developed, the 
general intensity or energy of the powers of each 
vary with one another. As is the tone of the 
bodily life, so is the general energy of the soul's 
capacities. When the tone of life is lowered, as in 
sleep, faintness and disease, there is a general 
tendency to depression of the psychical activities. 
When the tone of life is strong, there is correspond- 



2l8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFK. 

ing keenness of perception, power of reasoning, 
energy of feeling, and strength of will. This is 
the general rule. It is true of general states and 
would indicate a common essence. 

This reason, as the first, shows nothing more 
than that the mind is dependent upon the life. It 
does not prove a common agent. The author of 
the reason admits this, for he adds, u provided this 
can be reconciled with other facts." 

3. The community of essence is indicated by 
special activities. The unusual or extraordinary 
energy of the one diminishes that of the other. 
Special exertions of the nutritive life draw upon 
the mental, and high emotional or intellectual 
activity retards the nutritive. If physical growth 
be abnormal, the mental is dwarfed; or the mind 
may dwarf the body. In disease the physical 
power is husbanded and the mental is enfeebled. 

But this proves nothing more than the other 
two. If the mental principle is in organic union 
with the vital, the one supplying power ' to the 
other, we would have the same facts as if there was 
a common essence. 

4. The conscious depend upon unconscious ac- 
tivities. Some of these are material and some are 
immaterial. The act of sense-perception requires 



SOUL AND LIFE. 219 

as its condition a material object, a nervous appa- 
ratus, the excitement of the sensorium, and the 
transmission of this excitement by a continuous 
nervous organism. All these are processes of the 
unconscious in man, and prove that the soul in its 
nature is complex and extends its activities beyond 
the sphere of consciousness. 

It is difficult to hold consciousness above a special 
faculty if we once admit subconscious activities; 
and if we reduce consciousness to a special faculty, 
as Ried did, we abandon the philosophy of Natural 
Realism. The material activities only bring sen- 
sible objects in contact with the sensorium. The 
activities of the nervous system bring these move- 
ments of matter to the cognizance of the mind. 
In sight there is the vibration of ether, and that 
excites certain movements in the optic nerve; but 
the motion is not sight. While the mind is entirely 
engaged with other subjects, the light falls upon 
the nerve and produces excitement, but there is no 
mental response. It is true of all the senses that 
there may be stimulation of the vital organ without 
mental reaction. This is best explained on the 
theory of two agents. All that is said about the 
dependence of the conscious upon the unconscious 
proves only that mind, whatever it may be, de- 
pends upon a vitalized organ. 



220 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

5. The soul acts on matter. The soul holds 
those relations to extension and matter which are 
implied in the unconscious processes or acts which 
fulfil its conscious determinations. The fact can- 
not be overlooked that it is capable of being 
affected by and of acting upon unextended matter. 

The vitalized body is the organ of the mind. 
There are many facts which show that life is the 
medium of its communication with matter. If the 
soul is the living principle, it must first exert its 
lower activity before it can bring into play the 
mental function; and if not, the organ must be 
vitalized before it can be used by the mind. The 
influence which mind has over matter through a 
living organism brings out clearly a relation of in- 
timacy, but not identity, between the two princi- 
ples. The soul as a distinct agent may exert that 
influence as well as one identical with life. 

6. The body is in general and particular adapted 
to the habits and uses of the species, and of the 
individual soul with which it is connected. The 
adaptation is so manifold and complete as to indi- 
cate that the agent that forms and moulds the 
bodily members is the same that uses and applies 
them. The hand, for example, is specially fitted 
to be used by the inventive and skillful mind. 



SOUL AND LIFE. 221 

There is in the individual also a special harmony 
between the body and the soul. Quickness of in- 
tellect is attended by organs that are mobile and 
acute, and a temperament that is harmonious with 
both intellect and organism. This adjustment may 
be accounted for by a general law of pre-established 
harmony, or by the individual direction of Provi- 
dence, but is more rationally explained by sup- 
posing an identity of agent. This conclusion is 
strengthened by the fact that after the body is 
formed and developed it is changed in many re- 
spects by the influence of conscious activities. 
Habitual thoughts, feelings and purposes mould 
the body so as to make it a readier instrument and 
more fit manifestation of the spiritual activities 
and states. 

This reason, so far from proving an identity of 
agency, is one of the strongest proofs against it. 
It proves too much. It would prove that there is 
a soul principle not only in animals, but also in 
plants. The plant is built up from the first cell, 
according to a definite plan and for a specific end. 
Its life works after a pattern. It shows clearly an 
intelligence somewhere, but it certainly is not in 
itself. If a vital principle, without any mental 
capability, can construct the higher plants, with 



222 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

their adjustments of root, stem, leaves and flowers, 
why can not a vital principle only construct the 
human body? If the vital can, without being in- 
telligent, reveal such powers in the lower, why 
should we identify it with the soul in man? If 
the vital principle constructs the body and adjusts 
it to individual characteristics of the mind, reveal- 
ing the most wonderful wisdom, it is very strange 
that it should so long be unconscious of itself. 
It is also exceedingly strange that the soul should 
so long be unacquainted with its own works. It 
built the heart, and valves, and arteries, veins and 
capillaries as channels, and formed the blood, and 
provided a perfect apparatus for circulation, but 
only in Harvey, in recent times, it began to under- 
stand what it had done. We know that all this 
anatomical and physiological structure was formed 
under law, and that the vital agent was carrying 
out a plan of which it had no conception. If the 
vital and mental have a common essence, one part 
of that essence is the instrument of law, blind 
force, and the other is free and intelligent. There 
seems to be little choice between two theories, the 
one dividing into diametrically opposite parts the 
same agent, and the other postulating two princi- 
ples. 



SOUL AND LIFE. 223 

These reasons fail then to establish an identity. 
Every one is reconcilable with the supposition of 
two agents. The last reason seems to prove that 
there are two principles. 

The two classes of phenomena are entirely dis- 
tinct. The vital reveals itself in the material, by 
changing and arranging the positions and relations 
of matter. The mental reveals itself in thoughts. 
On account of the union of mind and body, the 
arrangements of parts of matter become signs of 
thought; but these material movements are not 
thoughts. The countenance changes with differ- 
ent feelings — relative positions of the parts of the 
face are changed, and by continuance tend to be- 
come fixed; the mind, through the power which 
vitality gives it, moulds the body; but the settled 
feature and the moulded frame are in themselves as 
widely separated from the thoughts and feelings of 
which they are symbols, as thought and motion. 
The wide difference in the effects indicates two dis- 
tinct principles. This conclusion is confirmed by 
the fact that the two have in many other respects 
widely separated fields. The higher functions of 
mind may be carried on without any physical 
change, except in the slightest movements among 
the particles of the brain. The vital operations 
go on without the knowledge of the mind. 



224 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The identity of the vital and psychical might be 
conceded to the materialist without yielding the 
fact of our immortality. He would still have the 
immense task of showing that life is a function of 
matter. But we note here, in the conclusion of this 
chapter, that it has not been proved that life and 
mind are different activities of the same agent. 
Whatever he may make out of the nature of life, as 
long as this stronghold remains in his rear, he has 
not shown that man is wholly from the dust and 
must wholly return to it. 



CHAPTER XII. 
BIOLOGY. 
r PHE materialist assumes the identity both of the 
-*■ vital and mental principle and of the vital and 
physical force. Materialism is not an established 
doctrine and the belief in a future life overthrown 
before both assumptions are fully proven. The 
defense of the faith in our personal immortality is 
made good if the argument by which either is 
supported is shown to be inconclusive. The pur- 
pose of this chapter is to show that the facts of 
biology do not prove that our existence after death 
is either impossible or improbable. 

The sciences may be divided into biological and 
abiological. Under the biological would fall 
botany, zoology, physiology, psychology, ethics, 
politics, etc. Biology, in a technical sense, is that 
special branch of science devoted to the investiga- 
tion of the facts and laws of the elementary forms 
of life. It is an inquiry into the nature of life 
from its general characteristics. Biological specu- 
lations are as old as philosophy, but the science 
has been so materially assisted by the revelations 
10* ( 225 ) 



226 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

of the microscope and the achievements of chem- 
istry, that it quite deserves a distinctive name and 
rank among the natural sciences. It has brought 
out many new facts, corrected many old errors, 
and confirmed many former conclusions. It gives 
promise of still richer results. But it has not ac- 
complished all that it is often believed to have 
done. The hopes of its students are too frequently 
taken for realized facts. Valid conclusion^ do not 
rest upon expectations, but established truths. 

All sensible objects are divided into two great 
classes variously called animate and inanimate, 
organic and inorganic, living and not living. Some 
scientists through fear of associated ideas have 
hesitated about the names of the classes, but none 
as to the classification itself of the phenomena. 
The animate is distinguished from the inanimate 
by certain prominent and important marks. 

Living beings pass through cyclical changes. 
Every individual, starting in a germ, advances to 
maturity, then decays and dies. Each generation, 
having given existence to successors, is followed by 
them in the same course. Germination, growth, 
death, is the history of every living thing. The 
inanimate are formed, but are not born; they decay 
and disintegrate, but do not die. 



BIOLOGY. 227 

Living beings are distinguished also by constant 
changes through waste and repair. The molecules 
by oxidation decay and are carried off, but new 
material takes their places by a process called by 
physiologists intussusception. Growth in living 
beings is altogether different from the mere increase 
in size in the inanimate. The inorganic grows by 
accretion — the addition of material from without 
under mechanical and chemical laws. The ani- 
mate grows by assimilation, involving not only 
mechanical and chemical principles but also a 
factor not reducible to either. 

Life cognizable by the senses is always connected 
with a peculiar chemical compound known as pro- 
toplasm. The chemical constituents in their defin- 
ite proportions are known: carbon, hydrogen, oxy- 
gen and nitrogen. But there is a principle aside 
from and above these, because dead as well as 
living protoplasm is known. Living beings are 
distinguished from the inanimate by the peculiar 
condition of protoplasm. 

The difference in the phenomena implies a differ- 
ence in the causes. A peculiar phenomenon must 
have a peculiar source. Some modern scientists, 
afraid of admitting a distinct entity, have been 
perplexed about the name by which their cause 



228 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

shall be known. Candolle calls it vital move- 
ment; Prout, organic force; Schmid, transmuting 
cell power; Blumenbach, nisus formativus; Miiller, 
vital principle; while many others, vital force. 
Prof. Huxley thinks it convenient to use the words 
vitality and vital force, as we do electricity and 
electrical force, but pronounces the assumption of 
an entity absurd. "To speak of vitality as any- 
thing but the name of a series of operations, is as 
absurd as if one should speak of the horology of a 
clock." * He regards living beings as machines of 
great complexity, with energy supplied to them. 
The existence of a peculiar force, or a force work- 
ing under peculiar conditions, must be admitted, 
and the whole controversy between materialists and 
others turns upon the nature of that force. 

Biologists have studied the phenomena in four 
main directions, giving rise to the four great divis- 
ions of the science: morphology, the study of the 
forms of life; distribution, the existence of the var- 
ious forms in different ages and countries; physi- 
ology, the functions of the organs in the organism; 
aetiology, the causes of life and its forms. Prof. 
Huxley in the Encyclopoedia Britannica has given 
the most important facts having bearings upon 

*Enc. Brit, Ninth Ed., Art. Biology. 



BIOLOGY. 229 

philosophical questions which have been yet at- 
tained in each department. 

Morphologists by means of the microscope have 
made very great advances in the knowledge of 
living tissues. The old aphorism, "every cell is 
from a cell," has been reaffirmed. All the tissues 
in plants and animals are made up of cells variously 
modified, and no cell arises but by separation from 
a pre-existing cell. A cell generally is a spheroidal 
mass of protoplasm surrounded by a cellulose 
wall. It was formerly supposed to consist always 
of a nucleus and wall, and was thought to be, in 
this definite form, the morphological unit. Some 
affirmed that this organism was the cause of life. 
But the microscope has revealed the working of 
the bioplast and the formation of the cell. The 
nucleus is first, and afterwards the wall is built up. 
Life, instead of being the result of organism, is 
found to be the organizing agent. Both nucleus 
and cell-wall are wanting in some cells. u For the 
whole living world," says Prof. Huxley, "it re- 
sults that the morphological unit — the primary and 
fundamental form of life — is merely an individual 
mass of protoplasm in which no further structure is 
discernible; that independent living forms may 
present but little advance upon this structure, and 



22,0 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

that all the higher forms of life are aggregates of 
such morphological units under diverse modifica- 
tions." The cells from an original likeness pass 
through stages of divergence until they take the 
features of the special tissue. By a process of dif- 
ferentiation the cells are changed so as to form 
the great variety of structures in the living world. 
Biology in the departments of distribution and 
physiology has very little that is important to our 
inquiry. Iyatitude and climate are known to be 
causes of differences in living beings, but they are 
not the sole causes. Places differing in longitude, 
but not in latitude and climate, have greatly differ- 
ent plants and animals. "In reference to existing 
conditions, nothing can appear to be more arbitrary 
and capricious than the distribution of living be- 
ings." 

Studies in physiology have brought out more 
clearly the great difference between the animate 
and inanimate. They have revealed the fact that 
a morphological unit is also a physiological unit, 
and the complex whole is but a number of physio- 
logically independent cells. The life of any being 
is the resultant of the activities' of the units. The 
threefold functions of the higher forms of being — 
sustentation, generation, and correlation — are not 



BIOLOGY. 231 

found in all beings or in all cells. Some of the 
lower forms of life show no sympathy of part with 
part. Some metamorphosed cells indicate no gen- 
erative power. In some of the lowest forms of 
animal life generation is by fission — a separation 
of the parts, and each arising in distinct individ- 
uals — and by gemmation, a throwing off of a small 
part as a bud, which becomes a being like the 
parent. Some plants and animals multiply both 
sexually and asexually. 

Our greatest interest is in the ^etiological inves- 
tigations. It is in its facts that we expect to find 
the greatest light upon the nature of life. It is 
still the doctrine of biology that life comes only 
from life. As late as the seventeenth century it 
was believed that life in its lowest forms might 
originate spontaneously; but one investigator after 
another reduced the number of supposed cases, 
until the doctrine became almost universal that all 
life is from life. Occasionally it has been an- 
anounced that life has originated from inorganic 
matter, but the experiments proved on examina- 
tion to be unsatisfactory. Prof. Huxley, in differ- 
ent places, has said: "The fact is that at the 
present moment there is not a shadow of trust- 
worthy evidence that abiogenesis does take place, 



232 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

or has taken place within the period during which 
life on the globe is recorded." "Of the causes 
which led to the origination of living matter it 
maybe said we know absolutely nothing." He 
thinks, however, that it may have originated spon- 
taneously, and if evolution be true it must have 
done so. We are not now concerned with his be- 
liefs as to possibilities, but with his knowledge of 
facts. 

The biologist, then, finds .life in his protoplasm 
that came from life, that builds wonderful struc- 
tures, but escapes all his analytical processes. 
What it is, and whence it came, he does not know. 
He is not authorized to say that it is not an entity, 
and his sneer does not make the belief in it as such 
absurd. 

The effort has been made to reduce the vital 
force to the plane of the physical forces by means 
of the doctrines of the conservation of energy and 
of the correlation of forces. One* of the interpre- 
ters of modern science has said: "Vital force is 
derived from the lower forces of nature; it is re- 
lated to other forces much as they are related to 
each other — it is correlated with chemical and 
physical forces." If this be accepted as a correct 

* Prof. Le Conte. 



BIOLOGY. 22,2) 

statement, we must see how it is to be under- 
stood. 

The inorganic world is divided into two great 
classes: elements and chemical compounds. The 
organic is divided also into two: plants and ani- 
mals. These classes rise one above the other: 
i. Elements, the lowest; 2. Chemical compounds; 
3. Plants; 4. Animals. They are planes of being, 
each higher resting upon those below. There are 
four classes of forces corresponding to the classes 
of beings. Among the elements we have gravita- 
tion, giving rise to weight and the mechanical 
forces. Among chemical compounds we have the 
physico-chemical forces: heat, light, electricity and 
chemical affinity. Heat, light and electricity were 
once thought to be distinct forces, but have been 
reduced by modern science to one. They are vi- 
brations of ether. After that discovery, it was not 
surprising to have the announcement made that 
they were transmutable. But the correlation is 
made to include also the mechanical forces. Prof. 
I^e Conte says,* "Heat, light, electricity, magnet- 
ism, and mechanical force, are transmutable into 
each other, back and forth. " But this is not ac- 
cepted as a clearly established fact by all scientists. 

* Conservation of Energy. Appleton Sc. Series, p. 172. 



234 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Quatrefages points out strong objections. He 
says, * ( ' Man has always been able to exercise a 
certain amount of control over the former (the 
physico-chemical); he can produce heat and light 
at will; but modern science cannot act upon the 
second (gravitation). We can neither augment 
nor diminish, reflect, nor refract, nor polarize 
weight. Here there is no transmutation of force 
similar to that in a machine worked by electricity 
or heat." 

It is important for us to observe that in what- 
ever way scientists settle the dispute, they recog- 
nize distinct planes of force, and that the lower 
forces are carried up to the higher plane. The 
law of gravitation is as fully in force among chem- 
ical compounds as among elements, and it modifies 
chemical affinities, as well as it is modified by them. 
Gravitation and chemical force are only names of 
unknown causes. 

Among plants we find a new force. Gravitation 
and chemical affinities are present, but there is a 
new order of phenomena that must be attributed 
to another cause, and it has been called by a large 
majority of scientists, vital force. Le Conte says 
that any object falling by decomposition from a 

/ * Human Species, p. 9. 



BIOLOGY. 235 

higher to a lower plane generates force by which 
matter is lifted into a higher. Matter falling from 
chemical compounds generates force by which ele- 
ments are lifted to the mineral world. He asserts 
11 that in all cases, vital force is produced by de- 
composition." He adduces a number of facts to 
illustrate and sustain his assertion. Among them, 
one of the most striking is that of fermentation. 
Alcoholic fermentation is decomposition. "Fer- 
mentation never takes place without the presence 
of the yeast plant; this plant never grows without 
producing fermentation, and the rapidity of the 
fermentation is in exact proporion to the rapidity 
of the growth of the plant. The decomposition 
of the sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid fur- 
nishes the force by which the plant grows and 
multiplies. The yeast plant not only assimilates 
matter, but also force." But the conclusion does 
not follow from these facts, that the vital force is 
only transmuted chemical force. The vital force 
in higher forms of life certainly allies itself with 
the lower forces, and augments its own force with- 
out becoming identified with them. The yeast 
plant did not originate in the decomposition which 
it caused, but the decomposed elements furnished 
materials for its structure, and with increased 
structure its power was increased. 



236 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

In the animal we find a still higher form of force 
called will, and in man that will takes a still higher 
character. In the animal we have all the laws of 
the lower carried up. We have gravitation and 
chemical affinities and vital force in co-operation 
with the higher power. The animal feeds upon 
the vegetable, and the vegetable feeds upon the 
chemical compounds. There is dependence, but 
at the same time a sphere of independence. The 
falling of vegetable or animal tissues furnishes 
material for the vital force. The forces sent up 
may be incorporated with the new animal tissues, 
and these become new instruments for the vital 
force, without the lower forces becoming vital 
force itself. The eye is a living organ, but it may 
be greatly aided by the lens. The living force 
avails itself of the mechanical powers of the eye as 
it does of the lens, but it is itself not transmutable 
into either. The lower forces are lifted up to be- 
come instrumentalities of the vital force without 
being changed into it. Prof. Balfour Stewart, in 
the concluding chapter of his "Conservation of 
Energy," discusses the position of life among the 
forces of the world. He says: * "That mysterious 
thing called life, about the nature of which we 

* Conservation of Energy. Appleton, p. 161. 



BIOLOGY. 237 

know so little, is probably not unlike the com- 
mander of an army in a well-guarded room, from 
which telegraphic wires lead to the various divi- 
sions. Life is not a bully, who swaggers out into 
the open universe, upsetting the laws of energy in 
all directions, but rather a consummate strategist, 
who, sitting in his secrect chamber before his 
wires, directs the movements of his great army." 

Prof. Le Conte admits that the change from one 
grade of force to another is, so far as we can see, 
not gradual but sudden. ' ' The groups of phenom- 
ena which we call physical, chemical, vital, animal, 
rational, and moral, do not merge into each other 
by insensible degrees. In the ascensive scale of 
forces, in the evolution of the higher forces from 
the lower, there are places of rapid paroxysmal 
change. ' ' * There is a greater gap between the 
vegetable and those below and also between the 
animal and the vegetable, than between the me- 
chanical and chemical. If the mechanical and 
chemical are transmutable, it does not follow even 
by analogy that they are transmutable with the 
vital. 

If life is derived from the lower plane, and is 
correlated with the physical and chemical forces, 

* Conservation of Energy, p. 195. 



238 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

they ought to be transmu table into each other back 
and forth. If this can be done at all, it is under 
the most peculiar conditions. Life comes only 
from life. Physical and chemical forces are never 
transmuted into the vital "unless living matter is 
then and there present." The correlation is cer- 
tainly not the same as in other cases. That con- 
dition leaves a grave doubt as to the fact of cor- 
relation. When matter is decomposed there is 
nothing lost to the sum of matter — it only appears 
in other forms. When chemical compounds are 
broken up, there is no loss of force. But when 
living matter dies, all the physical and chemical 
elements remain embodied in the dead frame, until 
little by little it is decomposed. What is gone? 
Prof. Le Conte confesses that there is something here 
which science does not understand. Life does not 
appear to be transmuted back to the forces of nature. 
Prof. Balfour Stewart wrote these significant 
words:* "We do not pretend to have discovered 
the true nature of life itself, or even the true nature 
of its relation to the material universe." "We 
have not succeeded in solving the problem as to 
the true nature of life, but have only driven the 
difficulty into a borderland of thick darkness, into 

* Conservation of Energy, p. 163. 



BIOLOGY. 239 

which the light of knowledge has not been able to 
penetrate." 

Materialism, therefore, fails to show that life is 
material, and that the soul must perish with the 
physical organism. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 

THERE are two series of phenomena in life, dis- 
tinguished by two distinct names. The differ- 
ence is so great that it has attracted the notice of 
men from the earliest ages. We unify the one 
under the name mind, and the other under that of 
body. Dualist and monist, materialist and idealist, 
dogmatist and agnostic, all agree in using these 
terms. It is one of the great problems of philos- 
ophy to determine the relation between the two. 

The positivist denies the possibility of the solu- 
tion. He limits knowledge to the relations be- 
tween phenomena binder necessary laws. We 
learn laws and forecast the future of the individual 
in his freest actions, but of being in itself we can- 
not know anything. As long as the positivist is 
true to his principles, he cannot determine whether 
the mind and body are distinct entities or not. 
Knowing nothing of their nature, he is incompetent 
to decide upon their relations to each other. 

We do not know substance aside from qualities. 
There may be a "thing in itself," a thing without 

(240) 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 24 1 

qualities, but we know absolutely nothing about it, 
and so far as our conscious life extends it is non- 
existent. But we do know being through its 
qualities. We know the being in the qualities. 
We know each thing so far as we know its qualities. 
Qualities without being are pure abstractions. 
They have no objective existence whatever. The 
only logical result from the Kantian doctrine of 
phenomena is Fichtean idealism. We are con- 
stantly dealing with being, not with abstraction. 
Life is a reality, not a dream. Positivism, con- 
tradicting our commonest experience, cannot give 
a satisfactory philosophy of life. 

The Monist denies a direct relation between 
mind and body, but finds a relation in some ulter- 
ior substance which is neither matter nor spirit. 
The two sets of properties are the two sides of that 
substance. It is a double-faced unity. Mind can- 
not influence body, nor body mind, except through 
the relation which each sustains to that one sub- 
stance. 

We know nothing confessedly about that sub- 
stance. We may call it God or Nature, but it is an 
unknown factor. It is a mere postulate to satisfy 
the intellectual craving for unity, and to relieve 
from some metaphysical difficulties. For example, 



242 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

we cannot explain fully the nature of the causal 
relation. We cannot understand how power may 
pass from one thing to another. We postulate this 
substance, and through it bring cause and effect 
together. But the necessity is not great enough to 
warrant so great an assumption. We do not be- 
lieve in it, because the reasons do not command our 
assent. Unless the Monist becomes dogmatic and 
falls into materialism or idealism, he holds to two 
separate entities in the sphere of our experience. 

The Dualist of the Descartian school denies any 
direct relation. The mind and body are associated, 
but exert no influence upon each other. There is 
a correspondence, but the cause must be sought in 
God. Matter is inert, .and when we have a volition, 
God by direct agency moves the muscles. The 
senses are affected, and God awakens in the mind 
the idea. This was the doctrine of Occasional 
Causes. This made God a mere agent, and life a 
perpetual miracle. To get rid of thoughts so un- 
worthy of God, Leibnitz proposed another theory: 
God knew from eternity all the actions of all minds 
and all the modes of action of all bodies. He 
brought those minds and bodies together whose 
activities corresponded, and the two run together 
in perfect harmony. Leibnitz agreed with Descar- 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 243 

tians in the doctrine of incommunieability between 
matter and spirit, but dissented in regard to the 
inertia of matter. A physical organization might 
carry on its processes independently of mind. 
Body and mind are like two clocks which run per- 
fectly together, but each with its own springs. This 
is known as the Preestablished Harmony theory. 

The Descartian Dualism noted the great differ- 
ence between the two kinds of phenomena, and 
taking one great quality in each, as widely apart as 
possible, drew the definitions of the two substances. 
These qualities were sometimes sublimated into 
substances. Extension itself was supposed to be 
matter, and thought mind. The difference between 
the qualities was very great, and the substances 
must be separated by the whole diameter of being. 
It was assumed that they could not act upon each 
other. But the assumption was unproved, except 
by their definitions, and was contrary to the facts 
of every-day experience. If so plain and patent 
a truth needs, or could have proof, the experiments 
made in recent years have placed a causal relation 
between the two above doubt. In some forms of 
perception we can determine not only what mental 
impressions will be made from stimuli, but how 
long before the impressions will arise. 



244 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Another form of Dualism regards matter and 
spirit as different substances, and soul and body as 
distinct entities, but in reciprocal influence. The 
Dualist of this class recognizes a causal relation 
between them as long as they remain in personal 
union. He believes that molecular changes in the 
brain cause mental action, and that thoughts and 
feelings and volitions cause corresponding changes 
in the brain, and through it changes in the muscles 
and fibres of the body. 

The Materialist denies any relation between 
them, other than that of different phases of activ- 
ity of the same material substance. " Matter is 
already in the field as an acknowledged entity. 
Mind considered as an independent entity is not so 
unmistakably in the field. Therefore, as entities 
are not to be multiplied without necessity, we are 
not entitled to postulate a new cause so long as it 
is possible to account for the phenomena by a 
cause already in existence."* If the Materialist 
can account for all the facts of life by material 
agency, according to the acknowledged law of 
scientific experiment, we have no right to suppose 
any other cause. * 

Prof. Bainf cites the canon, u The presence of 

* Prof. Ferrier. f Mind and Body, Chap. III. 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 245 

the cause must be followed by the presence of the 
effect, and the absence of the cause must be fol- 
lowed by the absence of the effect. " The latter 
he acknowledges, though more decisive, to be in- 
applicable in the case of mind and body. There 
is a third expedient: "If the agency in question, 
although irremovable, passes through gradations 
whose amount can be measured, we are able to 
observe whether the effect has corresponding 
changes of degree; and if a strict concomitance 
is observable between the intensity of the cause 
and the intensity of the effect, we have a presump- 
tion that may rise to positive proof of the con- 
nection." 

De la Mettrie stated the argument in one terse 
expression: "The soul increases and decreases with 
the body, therefore, it is destroyed with the body." 
His own and the efforts of all materialists are 
directed in large part to the proof of the premises, 
that the state of the mind and that of the body are 
absolutely concomitant. A number of facts, both 
those open to the observation of the masses and 
those known only to the scientist, are adduced. 

Among the more important are these: The 
feelings possess a natural language of expression. 
"Most of our emotions," says Darwin, "are so 



246 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

closely connected with their expression, that they 
can hardly exist if the body remains passive." 
Dr. Maudsley is more positive: "The special 
muscular action is not merely the exponent of 
the passion, but truly an essential part of it." 
All the abuses and casualties which impair the 
nervous system impair the mental faculties. A 
blow on the head suspends consciousness, and of 
greater severity produces permanent injury, occa- 
sioning some permanent derangement. "The 
more careful and studied observations of physiolo- 
gists have shown beyond question that the brain as 
a whole is indispensable to thought, to feeling and 
to volition, while they have further discriminated 
the functions of the different parts." * The body 
and mind are both immature in infancy, both 
rapidly develop in childhood, both grow more 
slowly in the later years of youth, both remain 
nearly stationary in middle life, and both rapidly 
decline in old age. When the development of the 
brain is arrested, there is a corresponding arrest of 
the mind. Idiots are nearly always small-brained. 
There is a minimum limit to the brain for sound 
minds. The rise and fall in mental states corres- 
pond to the tides in molecular movements in the 

* Prof. Bain, Miud and Body. 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 247 

nerve. Stimulants accelerate mental activity. 
Terror produces delirium. In sleep the nervous 
system is in repose, and there is suspended con- 
sciousness or the irregular mental activities, as 
dreams. When the normal supply of blood to the 
brain is changed, there are changes in regular pro- 
portion in the state of the mind. Hallucinations-, 
have been removed by the application of leeches to> 
the head. Insanity is almost always accompanied 1 ! 
by some disease of the brain. There is a corres- 
pondence between the size of the brain and mental; 
capacity — great thinkers usually have great brains.. 
The temperature of the head rises with the in- 
tensity of thought. Severe thought exhausts phys;- 
ical energy, indicating a correlation of the mental 
and physical forces. We have no direct evidence 
of the existence of mind apart from body. Mind 
and body appear and depart together. The pres- 
ence of the cause is followed by the presence of the 
effect, every change in one is attended by a corre- 
sponding change in the other, and the body, there- 
fore, is the cause of mental phenomena. 

But these are not all of the facts. There is a 
whole set of facts which have persistently refused 
to be brought under the materialistic theory. The 
sneer of the Materialist does not sret rid of them. 



248 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

"In vain does the spiritualist," says Prof. Ferrier, 
"found an argument for the existence of a separate 
immaterial substance on the alleged incompatibil- 
ity of the intellectual and physical phenomena to 
co-inhere in the same substratum. Materialism 
may very well stand the brunt of that unshotted 
broadside. This mild artifice can scarcely expect 
to be treated as a serious observation. Such an 
hypothesis cannot be meant to be in earnest." 
But materialists have taken it in earnest, and have 
struggled so far in vain to explain the incompati- 
bility; and the disdainful air with which the prob- 
lem is dismissed, does not solve it. Spiritualists 
may very well stand the brunt of this unshotted 
broadside. Prof. Bain acknowledged the diffi- 
culty.* "There is an alliance with matter, with 
object, or extended world; but the thing allied, the 
mind proper, has itself no extension and cannot be 
joined in local union. This is the only real diffi- 
culty of the physical and mental relationship." 
He thinks he has found a solution in the idea of a 
change of state from extended cognition to unex- 
tended cognition. But that leaves unexplained 
still how the same substratum has qualities so 
diverse as extension in place and thoughts of in- 

* Mind and Body, p. 136. 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 249 

finite space. Until all the facts are accounted for, 
the materalistic hypothesis is unproved. 

Of two theories, that is always the better which 
explains most of the facts. The Dualist proposes 
two substances in causal relation to each other: 
the body as the substratum of all material phenom- 
ena, and the mind, spirit or immaterial substance 
as the substratum for unextended thought, feeling 
and will. These two substances are sufficient to 
account for the two series of phenomena that re- 
fuse to be brought down to one substratum. The 
reciprocal causal relation accounts for the depend- 
ence of the one upon the other. All the facts are 
explained. This theory alone accepts and accounts 
for all the facts, and according to scientific canons 
must be received until some simpler one will bring 
all these facts into harmony. 

The facts adduced by materialists to prove an 
absolute dependence of the mind upon the body are 
not always clearly and fairly stated. A more pre- 
cise statement frequently changes the whole bear- 
ing of a fact. 

That part of the body in closest relation to the 
mind is the brain. This was recognized by Des- 
cartes, notwithstanding his radical conception of 
their independence. He supposed that the mind 



250 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

was connected in some way with the pineal gland. 
The double system of afferent and effervent nerves 
centering in the brain, the want of conscious sen- 
sation when the communication with the brain is 
broken, and a number of facts, show that the brain 
is in some sense the seat of the mind. The cor- 
respondence is found, therefore, chiefly, or it may be 
said exclusively, between the mind and the brain. 
If thought is a function of matter, it is that matter 
in the cerebral cortex. 

It is not true that the correspondence is such as 
to prove that the mind is a product, or result, or 
function of the brain. The facts show rather the 
reverse. The brain and mind are not developed 
simultaneously. There is no proof whatever of 
any kind of thought in the foetus. The infant is 
several weeks old before there is any manifestation 
of mental phenomena, and the earliest are of 
the most rudimentary kind. Compared with the 
young of many animals, it seems very stupid. But 
before birth it has a fully formed brain and a 
highly developed nervous mechanism. As com- 
pared with that of any animal, they are far more per- 
fect. The mind and brain have by no means been 
proportionately developed up to the time of birth. 
The mind once awakened develops with great 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 25I 

rapidity. The brain also grows, but not at all pro- 
portionately, and the relative disproportion grows 
greater all through childhood and the first years 
of youth. In middle life the brain remains largely 
in size and condition the same. No difference can 
be detected by any human tests in the nervous 
matter. But the mind of a large part of men 
makes great progress in development during this 
period. The world's best thinking is done by 
men of middle age. In the old there is generally 
a decline; but not unfrequently, while there is 
great feebleness of body, the intellect in all the 
higher faculties continues with unabated vigor. 

The development of the mind is said to be due 
not so much to the increased mass of the brain as 
to dynamical associations. Prof. Ladd asserts that 
this is no adequate explanation. "This develop- 
ment is not in the direction simply of associating 
together states of feeling, each one of which has 
an exact physical correlate in a physical association 
among the molecules of nervous substance. It is a* 
development which for its very existence requires 
something different from such associations. The 
child might go on forever, merely associating to- 
gether affections of its own mind in correspondence 
to dynamical associations among the nervous mole- 



252 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

cules, and yet have no growth of experience, such 
as it actually attains. To account for the bound- 
less expansion of the activities of consciousness, 
with its surprising new factors and mysterious 
grounds of synthesis and assumption, by proposing 
an hypothesis of ; dynamical associations' among 
the particles of nervous substance in the brain, is a 
deification of impotency. So far as we really know 
anything about the development of both brain and 
mind, we are compelled to say that the latter, when 
once started by sensations furnished through ex- 
citations of the former, proceeds to unfold its activ- 
ities with a rapidity and in an order for which no 
adequate physical cause can be assigned."* 

Dynamical association fails equally to account 
for the disproportion between the relative sizes of 
brains and powers of mind among individuals. 
Prof. Bain admits the disproportion: "An ordi- 
nary male human brain is 48 oz. ; the brains of ex- 
traordinary men seldom reach Cuvier's figure, 64 
oz. Now the intellectual force of the ordinary man 
is surpassed by Cuvier in a far higher ratio than 
this." Broca made a table of three hundred and 
forty-seven cases of brains. Cuvier's brain was 
heaviest. Byron's was next. The third was a mad- 

* Physiological Psychology, p. 621. 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 253 

man. Haussmann was the one hundred and fifty- 
eighth, whose brain fell to 43 oz., several ounces 
below the average of his ordinary countrymen. 
"With his small brain he surpassed in intelligence 
almost all his large-headed contemporaries." 
Quatrefages concludes a study of this table with 
these words : "Thus irrespective of all dogmatic or 
philosophic ideas we are led to the conclusion that 
there is a certain relation between the development 
of the intelligence and the volume and weight of 
the brain. But at the same time we must allow that 
the material element, that which is appreciable to 
our senses, is not the only one which we must 
take into account, for behind it lies hidden an 
unknown quantity, an x, at present undetermined 
and only recognized by its effects. "* This con- 
clusion of the great savant is strengthened when 
we extend the range of observation beyond the 
table of M. Broca. The brains of four men of no 
repute whatever ranged from 62.75 to 61 oz - > * nat 
of another weighed 60 oz. ; and that of a boy 60 oz. 
also. In an Insane Asylum more than thirty 
weighed" 55 oz. and upward, f In the relative 

*Human Species, p. 413. 

f Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. 



254 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

weight of brain and body the elephant stands below 
the sheep; and in the dolphin, the baboon and 
man, the relative weight is not greatly different. 
Cerebral convolutions are thought to constitute 
the characteristic difference. They do furnish a 
general rule, but do not measure accurately the 
degree of intelligence. Ruminants have convolu- 
tions that would indicate a much higher degree of 
intelligence than they really possess. 

Cerebral lesions have occurred without mental 
impairment. A number of such cases have been 
recorded. Several authors have collected these 
records. Prof. Ladd has given several.* Berenger 
de Carpi tells of a young man into whose brain 
a foreign body, the breadth of four fingers, was 
driven. Much of the substance of the brain 
was lost, both at the time of th'e accident and some 
days after; but the patient, in the full posssession 
of his mental powers, lived for a long time. Tonget 
tells of an Italian whose skull was crushed, and so 
much of the cerebral substance was lost that the 
attendant physician calculated that the lesion 
reached down nearly to the corpus callosum. But 
the man lived without any injury to his intellectual 
faculties. I^allemand tells of a person whose right 

* Physiological Psychology, p. 265. 



RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 255 

cerebral hemisphere was found to be rilled with a, 
fluid, but had lived in a normal mental state. The 
case of the man through whose brain a crowbar 
was driven by a blast of powder, but who lived 
twelve and half years, is well known. To these 
instances it would be easy to add a number of 
others. 

When the facts are fully stated, they prove that 
there is a general dependence of mind upon the 
body, but they do not warrant the conclusion of 
materialism. Even in those upon which most 
stress is laid, we detect a difference between the 
condition of the body and that of the mind, which 
indicates that there are two substances instead of 
one. 

Closely connected with the line of argument of 
the Materialist is another: The soul now lives in a 
body; we never know it apart from body; it must 
have a body in order to be related to space; and, 
therefore, it is incapable of existing apart from 
body. 

This is an argument based on our ignorance. 
That we have no sensible experience of a separate 
existence of the soul, is not a proof that it does not 
so exist. Prof. Fiske* has justly observed: "The 

* Destiny of Man, p. no. 



256 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

materialistic assumption that there is no such state 
of things as thought and feeling without a cere- 
brum, and the life of the soul accordingly ends 
with the life of the body, is, perhaps, the most co- 
lossal instance of baseless assumption in the his- 
tory of philosophy. No evidence of it can be 
alleged beyond the familiar fact that during the 
present life we know soul only in its association 
with the body, and, therefore, can not discover 
disembodied soul without dying ourselves. This 
fact must always prevent us from obtaining direct 
evidence for the belief of the soul's survival. But 
a negative presumption is not created by the ab- 
sence of proof in cases where in the nature of things 
proof is inaccessible." To those who believe in a 
spiritual Creator, there is no difficulty in believing 
in a soul capable of living and of communicating 
with things in space, even though it has no body. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
NATURE OF THE MIND. 

THE two great series of phenomena have never- 
been called in question by the most radical 
skeptics. They are separated by the most marked 
characteristics. They have nothing in common. 
The Idealist is compelled to admit that some of his 
ideas appear to have an objective source and that 
they are wholly unlike other ideas. The Materialist 
is also compelled to recognize the fact that in all his 
thinking he distinguishes between the sensations 
and ideas and the external causes of these impres- 
sions. For the sake of convenience, all the various 
schools have agreed to call the one mental and the 
other material. From these two series we must 
learn all that is possible for us to know about, 
either matter or mind. 

The mental phenomena consist of thoughts, 
feelings and volitions. They are matters of the 
most certain knowledge. They are the conditions 
of knowing anything else. We are sometimes de- 
ceived by the senses, but we are always certain that. 
(257) 



258 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

we had such impressions. We may suppose that 
we have seen a ghost when we saw only a shadow, 
but we are certain as to the mental fact. The 
man with delirium tremens believes that he sees 
demons and serpents while he really sees nothing, 
but he is certain that he thinks he sees them. 
Whatever a man doubts, he is always, while doubt- 
ing, certain of the fact that he is doubting. Men 
have denied all objective reality and shut them- 
selves up in extremest subjectivity, but no man 
has denied the facts of the mind as phenomena. 
We know positively that we think, have pleasures 
and pains, form purposes, but we are sometimes at 
a loss to determine whether these things have cor- 
responding objects. Thought "is certainly in the 
field." It is not so certain that matter is. 

The material phenomena consist of groupings 
in extension and movement. All matter has ex- 
tension, inertia and gravity. Other qualities of 
matter are color, form, position in space, hardness, 
electricity, cohesion, crystallization, heat, light, 
electricity, etc. Every form of activity is move- 
ment in space. 

None of these material qualities belong to the 
mental. Some terms are applied to both series, as 
1 intensity,' 'quality/ ' degree, ' but they have very 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 259 

different meanings. An intense thought and an 
intense heat are quite different things. In the two 
connections intense is a different word. The facts 
of the one cannot be expressed in the terms of the 
other. l ' The fundamental modes of mental mani- 
festation and the laws which govern their activities 
are perfectly distinct from the phenomena and laws 
of the material world." * 

In the material there is the law of necessity. In 
the mental there is the consciousness of freedom. 
In matter there is general, if not universal, inertia. 
In mind there is self-activity. These character- 
istics may not be absolute. Cause may exist to 
some extent in mind, and matter may have some 
elements of spontaneous activity, for both have 
been asserted, but still there are broad character- 
istics upon which our natural and metaphysical 
sciences have been built. 

Phenomena imply a subject. J. S. Mill's defi- 
nitions of matter and of mind are well known. 
The one "is the permanent possibility of sensa- 
tion;" the other, u a series of feelings with a back- 
ground of possibilities of feelings." Bain says, 
"The collective I or self can be nothing different 
from the feelings, actions and intelligence of the 

* Sully's Psychology, p. 690. 



260 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

individual." * These definitions do not go beyond 
abstractions. A series, a collection, unless a series 
of things, is nothing. A series of feelings with 
nothing that feels is as abstract as a series of colors 
when nothing is colored. Mr. Lewes does not 
hesitate to call matter and mind abstractions. 
"Body is a persistent aggregate of objective phe- 
nomena; soul is a persistent aggregate of subjective 
phenomena." U A11 existence as known to us is 
the felt." "I know the soul in knowing its feel- 
ings (concretes) and in knowing it as an abstraction 
which connects those concretes in a symbol. The 
secondary question is, whether this abstraction 
represents one existent and the abstraction body 
another and wholly different existent, or the two 
abstractions represent one in two different as- 
pects." f Activities imply something that acts. 
Extension implies something extended. Thinking 
implies something that thinks. We cannot think 
of phenomena without thinking at the same time 
of the thing which appears. "Mind as known to 
the possessor of it," says Herbert Spencer, "is a 
circumscribed aggregate of activities ; and the co- 
hesion of these activities one with another through- 

* Ueberweg's History of Philosphy, vol.11, p. 431. 
f Physical Basis of Mind, p. 376. 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 26 1 

out the aggregate compels the postulate of a some- 
thing of which they are the activities."* This 
necessity of " postulating" a substance for the 
phenomena belongs to the very nature of thought. 
Ivewes calls it a law of our organism. Mind there- 
fore is not a mere abstraction. 

If we grant that the nature of mind and the 
nature of matter are unknowable, we do know the 
qualities of each, and by the law of discrimination 
we are prevented from believing that they are 
identical. We distinguish any two objects by their 
qualities. Though both are fruits, we distinguish 
in this way an apple from an orange. So we distin- 
guish a plant from an animal. In the same way 
we distinguish oxygen from carbon. We find the 
qualities of the mental series wholly unlike those 
of the physical series, and under that law by a 
spontaneous act of thought postulate different sub- 
stances. The one the world has called material, 
and the other spiritual. The problem of material- 
ism is to correct that spontaneous judgment and 
reduce the mental phenomena to the activity of 
matter. Until this is done we are compelled to 
believe in two entities. 

The Materialist reduces mind to a mere function, 

*Psychology, Vol. I, p. 159. 



262 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

or product, or result of matter. In a general sort 
of way this is thought to be done by showing that 
"the mental life is a chain of events running par- 
allel to a chain of physical results." But Mr. 
Sully warns us against supposing that because we 
have found the concomitance we have explained 
the nature of mind. "There is a great deal of 
loose psychological thinking abroad just now under 
the guise of physiological psychology. It is sup- 
posed that to name the nervous accompaniments or 
conditions of mental phenomena is to explain them. 
But this is not so. No sound psychology is possible 
which does not keep in view the fundamental dis- 
parity of the physical and the psychical, and the 
consequent limits of the physiological explanation 
of mental facts."* The changes which take place 
in the brain are movements in space, and they give 
us no light at all on the mental changes. The 
great chasm between mind and matter remains. 
The shifting of the molecules in relation to each 
other is not thought. 

The grossest attempt to reduce mental phenom- 
ena to the material was to make them a function 
of the brain. As the function of the stomach is 
to digest, and the glands to secrete, and the heart to 
* Psychology, p. 4. See also Appendix C. 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 263 

propel the circulation, so the function of the brain 
is to think. The brain was said by Buchner to 
secrete thought as the liver secretes bile. But the 
product of the gland is material. The bile has ex- 
tension, color, taste, weight. Thought has no 
material quality. This theory has been denounced 
by Materialists themselves as the philosophy of 
savages. * 

Every theory that would make thought a pro- 
duct of matter labors under precisely the same 
difficulty. Every product of matter is a grouping 
of material things ; but no new grouping of ex- 
tended objects is a thought. 

Another theory is that thought is a movement. 
It is supposed that movements may cause some- 
thing apart from the moving objects. Motion is 
sometimes regarded as immaterial. But motion 
without some object moving in space is a mere 
abstraction — it has no existence. Light, sound, 
heat, are in this general way believed to have ex- 
istence independent of their causes. Sound is a 
vibration of ether set in motion by the vibrations 
of some object. These waves of ether strike the 
chords of the auditory nerve, and from them there 
arises in the mind the sensation of sound. The 

* Bowne's Metaphysics. 



264 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

action of the mind in hearing is not the same as the 
vibrations of the air. Heat, electricity, light, are 
molecular movements of greater or less rapidity 
and peculiar combinations. They have the charac- 
teristics of the bodies to which they belong. They 
are movements in space. But no movement in 
space is a thought or feeling. 

When explanation fails, recourse is had to the 
mystical. We are told that we have thought too 
meanly of matter, that there is mind-stuff in mat- 
ter, that materialism does not degrade mind but 
exalts matter. But that assumes the very point in 
dispute, and leaves the subject just where it was. 
Men with decided" tendencies to materialism, like 
Mr. Sully, admit that the question has not been 
settled in favor of materialism by accepted scientific 
methods. Mr. Spencer says that if we must choose 
between the alternatives of translating the mental 
into the physical or the physical into the mental, 
he would take the latter.* If the mental has the 
stronger ground for recognition, materialism has 
not succeeded very well in making the mind a 
result of physical organization. 

The effort to translate the terms of the nervous 
system into those of the mental is absurd. * The 

* Psychology, p. 156. 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 265 

nerves are phosphorized and non-phosphorized. 
They are efferent and afferent, reflex and inhibi- 
tory. But we have no classes of phosphorized and 
non-phosphorized thoughts, no afferent and efferent 
memories, no reflex and inhibitory imaginations. 
So the attempt to classify the movements of the 
molecules in the terms of the mind is equally ab- 
surd. We must already know the laws of the 
mind before we can detect the concomitance. The 
closest study of the movements of the brain would 
never suggest the idea of the mental correspond- 
ence. 

The mind is not only a subject, but it is a unit. 
We refer all its actions to one source, the ego. I 
suffer pain, I feel a pleasure, I see a picture, I 
will to write. Whatever is done or felt is referred 
to myself. The mental phenomena are very com- 
plex, but they are united in one whole. The color 
of an object comes through the eye, its fragrance 
through the smelling, its flavor through the taste, 
its smoothness through the touch, its temperature 
through another sense, its resonance through the 
ear. Different parts of the brain are affected. An 
object is perceived to-day, and will be remembered 
to-morrow. It is described by words expressive of 
all its different qualities. It suggests ideals. All 



266 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

these acts involve different nerve fibres and different 
faculties of the mind. But I take these different 
sensations, and unite them in one act of percep- 
tion. I remember it after all the sensations are 
gone. I voluntarily make it the basis of new cre- 
ations. There is one subject for all these intellect- 
ual acts. Without the unit being there had been 
no perception, no subsequent memory, no imagina- 
tion. The series has a bond of union, a unifying 
principle in the thinking subject. 

Materialism not only fails to account for that 
unity, but is inconsistent with it. Account for its 
origin as we may,* or fail to account for it, that 
unity is a fact assumed in all our thought, and is 
always a factor in our consciousness. It is a fact 
which must be brought into harmony with our 
theory. Materialism fails to do it. The molecules 
are continually changing, the old ones passing off 
and new ones taking their places. But the thinking 
subject is abiding. The molecules are indefinite 
in number. That unity cannot exist in all together, 
for nothing can be found in the aggregate which is 
not in the parts. There can be no public sentiment 

* The old psychology supposed we had an immediate con- 
sciousness of that unity. Latterly it has been called a neces- 
sary assumption and a necessary inference. 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 267 

when every man has no opinion whatever. There 
can be 110 common consciousness when the sepa- 
rate molecules have none ; and if each one has a 
consciousness, then there would be an indefinite 
number of egos instead of one. There is no one 
which has the consciousness for all, for there is no 
common centre known, nor can there be such a 
centre; for then it would be out of relation to the 
others except in space, and an unrelated unit re- 
peated is not consciousness. Materialism provides 
for nothing but a succession which it calls a series; 
but succession is not a series without a unifying 
subject. The series consists of individuals united 
in thought, and that thought must belong to one 
conscious subject. Consciousness in its very nature 
cannot be composite, and it is not strange that 
Materialists, seeing the straits into which they are 
driven, have tried to impeach the veracity of con- 
sciousness and prove it delusive. 

Memory, one of the higher faculties, reveals the 
distinctive nature of the mind. The memory takes 
the facts of the past, and by renewed images brings 
them into a present experience. An image formed 
by the mind's own powers is the recognized repre- 
sentative of a former experience. There is a dis- 
tinguishing activity. It is not merely a recurring 



268 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LJFE. 

image, but a recurring- image recognized as such 
and distinguished from the first or original one. 
The mind distinguishes also between itself and its 
thoughts. It distinguishes between its present 
and past experience. This involves an abiding 
self. If there had been nothing more than succes- 
sion there might be repetition, but no recognition 
of it. Former experiences are collected into a 
connected whole, and a permanent self alone is 
competent to do it. "Memory can exist only 
wdiere there is a permanent self amid changing ex- 
periences."* 

Memory is a fact that must be explained. The 
Materialist says the brain remembers. Physiologists 
assure us that the atoms of which the brain is com- 
posed are continually changing. u Here is the pass- 
ing stream of atoms, but here is the abiding person. 
The atoms which had my former experience are 
gone, and we should have supposed that they car- 
ried the experience with them. But strangely 
enough the experience remains, and these new 
atoms know all about it. Did the passing atoms 
whisper it to the new-comers as they slipped 
away? Were they able to give a kind of pass- 
word or countersign as they went out? And were 

* Dewey's Psychology, p. 186. 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 269 

the incoming atoms able to so improve the hint 
given that we should never dream of the change ? 
Bnt this would be to turn science into sheer fetish- 
ism and to invoke magic as an explanation."* 
The memory is certainly not in the elements. It 
is certain also that it is not the product of nervous 
action. The action of any fibre tends to repeat 
itself. The muscles though constantly changing in 
the particles retain their acquired facility of move- 
ments and automatically repeat them. So in nerve 
fibres. But the changed position in space of the 
molecules of a nerve is not memory. There is no 
place in this theory of nervous action for voluntary 
memory, when the mind addresses itself to recall- 
ing a past experience and only succeeds after long 
effort. It fails also to explain the acts of memory 
suggested by contrast. It fails equally to account 
for the different things suggested by the same ob- 
ject in the different mental states — sad things when 
we are sad, and amusing things when we are 
jovial. The added theory of nerve cells in which 
the ideas and images are deposited and which 
respond in the various moods, does not relieve the 
difficulties. Even though there be hundreds of 
millions of these cells, psychology and physiology 

*Bowne's Metaphysics, p. 369. 



270 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

show no connection between their action and that 
of the memory. Prof. Ladd concludes his patient 
examination of the physical basis of memory with 
these words: "None of the relations conjectured 
as probably existing between the molecular consti- 
tution and dynamical associations of the cerebrum 
on the one hand and the facts of conscious experi- 
ence on the other, even on the supposition that 
these conjectured relations were all demonstrated 
facts of psycho-physical science, would amount 
to anything approaching the character of an ex- 
planation. For none of these physical conditions 
immediately concern the very mental activity 
which constitutes the essence of memory. What 
is explained, if anything, is simply why I remem- 
ber one. thing rather than another — granted the 
mind? s power to remember anything at all. This 
power is a spiritual activity wholly sui generis ) and 
incapable of being conceived of as flowing out of 
any physical condition or mode of energy what- 
ever. ' ' * 

Among the faculties denominated higher is the 
will. It constitutes character, and is often said to 
be the essential element in personality. It is, in 
the universal spontaneous belief, held to be free, 

* Physiological Psychology, p. 556. 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 271 

and stands, therefore, at the furthest remove from 
physical forces. It is conditioned in some degree 
by physical states, but it also conditions them. 

Will is not automatic activity. It cannot be re- 
duced to reflex action. An impulse sent along an 
efferent nerve to a nerve center and carried back 
to the muscle is not an act of will. Whatever re- 
lation the will may have to the nerve centers, no 
one will call such muscle movements voluntary. 

Will is not spontaneous impulse. There are 
impulses which involve the mind. Sensuous im- 
pulses of the general sense, as that for food or air, 
impulses of the special senses, as of the eye for 
light and the ear for sound, impulses toward per-< 
ception, impulses to imitation and impulses from 
ideas, as that of a hypnotized person, are mental. 
They fall under consciousness, and are thus dis- 
criminated from reflex action, but they do not 
involve conscious purpose. There is no end toward 
which the energy is purposely directed. These 
impulses are not purely or solely mechanical, but 
they are blind, and are properly called instinctive. 

Will is not desire. There is no will without 
desire, for without feeling the will has nothing to 
arouse it to action ; but desire is not will. There 
may be strong desire when we will the contrary. 



2 J2 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The will holds in abeyance or guides the in- 
stinctive impulses. It selects between the objects 
of desire. As it is ruled by, or rules the lower 
principles of action, it is degraded or ennobled. 
It is in this power over the physical that the soul 
comes to its clearest consciousness of being a dis- 
tinct entity, a person, and not a brute, or a mere 
thing. It censures or approves itself, and con- 
demns and praises others, because it feels that soul 
or spirit can and ought to control to its own inter- 
ests the actions of the body. 

In the face of the facts which lie at the bottom 
of the universal moral judgments, and of all the 
governments of the world, materialism regards the 
will a mere function of the organism. It regards 
it as only a more complex form of reflex action. 
"When the automatic actions become so involved, 
so varied in kind, and severally so infrequent as no 
longer to be performed with unhesitating precision 
— when after the reception of one or more complex 
impressions the appropriate motor changes become 
nascent, but are prevented from passing into im- 
mediate action by the antagonism of certain other 
nascent motor changes appropriate to some nearly 
allied impression — there is constituted a state of 
consciousness which, when it finally issues in ac- 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 273 

tion, displays what we term volition."* "That 
will comes into existence through the increasing 
complexity and imperfect coherence of automatic 
actions is clearly implied by the converse fact that 
when actions which were once incoherent and vol- 
untary are frequently repeated, they become cohe- 
rent and voluntary, "f Mr. Spencer speaks of 
"the illusion in which the idea of free will com- 
monly originates." The same doctrine is taught: 
by Mr. G. H. Lewes. "There is no real and es- 
sential distinction between voluntary and involun- 
tary actions." "All actions are reflex, all are the 
operations of a mechanism, all are because the 
mechanism has sensibility as its vital property." 
"By the will we must understand the abstract 
generalized expression of all impulses which de- 
termine when those impulses have an ideal origin ; 
by volition the still more generalized expression of 
all impulses which determine actions. "J The ani- 
mals are mere automata. The somnambulist is an 
automaton. Sensation, consciousness and will are 
physiological functions of the nervous system. 
But there is after all a factor not accounted for. 

* Spencer's Psychology, p. 496. 
t Do., p. 499. 

t Physical Basis of Mind, pp. 422, 427. 
12* 



274 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Mr. Spencer concludes his discussion of the will by 
saying: "The aggregates of feelings and ideas con- 
stituting the mental I, have not in themselves the 
principle of cohesion holding them together, as a 
whole; but the I which continuously survives as 
the subject of these changing states is that portion 
of the unknowable power which is statically con- 
ditioned in special nervous structures pervaded by 
a dynamically conditioned portion of the unknow- 
able power called energy."* There is the subject 
of volitions which controls to its own ends the en- 
ergy belonging to the organism. The profound 
thinker is brought at last to recognize it. 

Materialists confound the mechanism and the 
conscious subject controlling it. They try to show 
causes by indicating instruments. To point out 
the keys and chords of the piano is not to account 
for the grand anthem. But cerebral psychologists 
have failed to explain voluntary motion upon their 
own principles. The cerebral spinal system is 
composed of a great number of nerve cords and 
nerve centres. Bach centre may be the source of 
reflex action. All are under the control of one 
power. Every one of them is an instrument of the 
will. The theory of the Materialist to be complete 

* Psychology, p. 504. 



NATURE OF THE MIND. 275 

must find some one physical centre which has 
command of all the others, but there is no such 
special centre. The physical basis of the will, 
contrary to the materialistic mechanism, is the 
centres of the central hemispheres. 

Materialism fails to account for voluntary atten- 
tion. There are responses to stimuli that are invol- 
untary. A sudden flash of light arrests involuntary 
attention. But the mind may select the very 
weakest of the stimuli and give it the most patient 
attention. It may pour over a faded manuscript, 
written in a strange language, oblivious of great 
noises, or a burning fever or craving hunger, trying 
to decipher the characters for the benefit of science. 
It may in patriotic devotion hold the automatic 
movements in check until the life is worn away by 
torture. All the interest of the organism in such 
a case is against it. The will destroys the organ- 
ism. In the materialistic hypothesis, the function 
consumes itself. Materialism has brought us under 
obligations by exposing to us more of the physical 
agencies of the soul, but has not made us better ac- 
quainted with the mysterious being we call self. 

The words of Gatien-Arnoult, quoted by Hamil- 
ton, have lost none of their force: "I turn my 
attention on my being and find I have organs, and 



276 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

that I have thoughts. My body is the complement 
of my organs: am I then my body or any part of 
my body? This I cannot be. The matter of my 
body in all its points is in a perpetual flux, in a 
perpetual process of renewal. I — I do not pass 
away, I am not renewed. None probably of the 
molecules which constituted my organs some years 
ago form any part of the material system which 
I now call mine. It has been made up anew, 
but I am still what I was of old. These organs 
may be mutilated; one, two, or any number of 
them may be removed; but not the less do I con- 
tinue to be what I was, one and entire. It is even 
not impossible to conceive me existing deprived of 
every organ; I, therefore, who have these organs, 
or this body, I am neither an organ nor a body. 
But if I try to conceive of myself without a thought, 
without some form of consciousness, I am unable. 
A suspension of thought is thus a suspension of my 
intellectual existence; I am, therefore, essentially a 
thinking, a conscious being; and my true character 
is that of intelligence — an intelligence served by 
organs.* ' 



CHAPTER XV. 
SENSATION. 

THOROUGH-GOING Materialism only can con- 
dition the existence of the soul upon that of 
the body. "Transfigured Realism," which re- 
gards the substance of the mind unknowable, can- 
not legitimately deny a future life. It must leave 
its principles to become dogmatic. If it says that 
science cannot prove a future life, the Christian is 
willing to accept its statement as to its own impo- 
tence and furnish upon other grounds the proof. 
But thorough Materialism makes mind a function 
of the nervous system, a product of vitalized matter, 
a result of organism, and when the organism is 
broken up the soul must perish. This form of 
materialism identifies the mind with life, and life 
with the physical forces. It makes the mind de- 
pendent upon the brain, and the faculties of mind 
upon nerve centres. It makes sensation the mental 
unit, of which mind is the outgrowth. It then 
identifies sensation with the movement of the 
nerves. The vibration of the nerve is feeling, these 
(277) 



278 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

feelings are registered in the organism, these 
through the nervous system are related and com- 
pounded, and thus we have mind with all its 
thoughts, feelings, and will. All are reducible to 
vibrations of matter. Peculiar vibrations of matter 
are thoughts; thoughts are peculiar vibrations of 
matter. The movements among the molecules of 
the nerve and the sensation are two sides of the 
same force. 

Mr. G. H. Lewes, in regard to the relation of life 
to mind, says: "The analogy of life and mind is 
the closest of all analogies, if, indeed, the latter 
is anything more than a special form of the other. 
Both are processes, or under another aspect func- 
tional products. Neither is a substance, neither is 
a force."* There is an analogy between life and 
mind. u The Bioplasm is characterized by a contin- 
uous composition and decomposition," and these 
represent the neural tremors in the nervous system. 
These tremors are "the neural units, the raw ma- 
terial of consciousness." Corresponding to the 
laws of life, called Biostatical laws, are laws of mind 
which are named Psychostatical laws. "Both sets 
may be reduced to one primary law in each. 
Every vital phenomenon is the product of two fac- 

* Problems of Life and Mind, Vol. I., p. 102. 



SENSATION. 279 

tors, the organism and its medium in Biology ; and 
every psychical phenomenon is the product of two 
factors, the subject and object in Psychology." 
"But subject and object are not two independent 
and unallied existences, as held by Dualism ; they 
are different forms of only one existence, as held by 
Monism. " * " The great problem of Psychology as 
a section of Biology is to develop all psychical 
phenomena from one fundamental process in one 
vital tissue. The tissue is nervous; the process is a 
grouping of neural units. A neural unit is a tre- 
mor. Several units are grouped into a higher 
unity or neural process which is a fusion of tre- 
mors, and each process may in turn be grouped 
with others, and thus from this grouping of groups 
all the varieties emerge. What on the physiologi- 
cal side is simply a neural process, is on the psy- 
chological side a sentient process. We may liken 
sentience to combustion, and then the neural units 
will stand for the oscilating molecules. "f The 
action of mind is determined by stimuli, both in- 
ternal and external, and, therefore, called reflex 
action. "This reflex is a process of grouping un- 
derlying all psychological phenomena. Its anima 
genera are feeling and action." "Intelligence in 

*Pp. 109, 112. -f-P- 125- 



280 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

its rudementary form is simply discrimination in 
feeling."* "Every psychical fact is a product of 
sense-work, brain-work, and muscle-work. Each 
mental state is a function of three variables. r 'f 
"The subject and object are inseparable in any real 
sense; are separable only ideally. "J The principle 
upon which his book, Physical Basis of the Mind, 
is based, is that sensation, consciousness, sensibility, 
belong to the physiological properties of the nerv- 
ous system in a vital organism, and the physiolo- 
gical properties are inseparable from every segment 
of that system. 

In this system there are some radical points 
which are only assumed or very unsatisfactorily 
proved. It overlooks the fact, i. A nerve tremor is 
not a sensation. There are nerve movements 
which are not felt. This is true of the sympathetic 
system as long as the action is healthy. It may be 
replied that sensation is limited to the cerebro- 
spinal system. But we can discover no difference 
in the constituents of the two systems either by the 
microscope or by chemical tests, and we may ask 
why nerve matter in the one system is sensation, 
and not in the other. Diseased action of a sympa- 
thetic nerve falls under consciousness, and the sys- 

*P. 127. fp. 136. jp. 174. 



SENSATION. 28l 

tern therefore is not so far removed from conscious- 
ness that if the movements of the fibres were sen- 
sations they would not be known. The mere 
vibration of a nerve is not sensation. 

There are movements of nerves in the cerebro- 
spinal system which are not attended by sensations. 
Under the influence of morphiates there are often 
violent actions of the fibres, but no known sensa- 
tion. The patient often writhes under the surgical 
knife, but does not remember any suffering. If 
the anaesthetics only destroyed memory, their dis- 
covery was not such an unquestionable benefit as 
the world believes. In cases of injuries of the 
spinal cord there are reflex actions of the legs, 
while the subject declares that he has no sensation 
whatever. When the mind is intently engaged 
upon any subject or occupied by any great feeling, 
there are not only no responses to the stimuli 
which usually arrest the attention, but none also to 
violent blows which leave the nerves seriously 
affected for some days. Men have been sorely 
blistered without a .consciousness of heat, and 
bruised without being aware of any stroke. There 
were movements of the nerves, vibrations, without 
sensation. Mr. Lewes makes a distinction between 
sensations. He repeats *he story of Dr. Hunter's 



282 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

patient whose leg was pricked, and to the in- 
quiry whether he felt it replied, " No, but you see 
my leg does." To most minds this is nonsense, 
but I^ewes calls it physiological truth. A sensa- 
tion which the man does not feel is as absurd as a 
motion when nothing moves. 

Vibrations of the nerves and sensations, if two 
sides of the same force, are as unlike as if from two 
forces. They are as different as two facts can be. 
The most perfect acquaintance with the nervous 
mechanism would not make one acquainted with a 
sensation he had never felt. No extent of study of 
the nerves creates a sensation, nor study of sensa- 
tion moves the nerves. The connection between 
the nerve and the sensation is a mystery. No one 
can tell how nerve tremor becomes sensation. To 
account for it sub-conscious activities, and an un- 
known subject of which both are phenomena, have 
been hypothecated ; but neither is proved, or if 
proved wQuld explain it. The very attempt to 
explain is an acknowledgment that they are not 
identical. 

Weber's law has been thought to show that both 
are from the same physical cause. That law pro- 
poses to give the ratio between the increase in in- 
tensity of stimuli and the discriminative sensibility. 



SENSATION. 283 

A slight increase of stimulus just above the 
"threshhold" is discovered, but can not be de- 
tected when the stimulus is greater. In order that 
the intensity of a sensation should increase in 
arithmetical progression, the stimulus must in- 
crease in geometrical progression. Sully says : 
' k Observation does not fully support the generali- 
zation ; that it holds good only with stimuli of 
medium strength, and as we approach the thresh- 
hold there are considerable deviations from it."* 
But it applies to a sufficient number of cases to 
show that the physical and mental are not two 
sides of the same force, for then with every increase 
of the one there must be an equivalent increase of 
the other. The movement on the physical side by 
a universal law of physics must be increased by 
every increment of the stimulus. The deviations 
show that cerebral psychology has failed to find 
any definite relations between the two. Eminent 
physiological psychologists, among them Wundt, 
have acknowledged that the connection between 
them remains a mystery. 

A sensation can be discriminated from nerve 
movements in the effects of electrical currents. 
Dead dogs by these currents have been made to 

* Psychology, p. 115. 



2 84 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

move and even bark. Amputated limbs have been 
moved by contractions of the muscles. So marked 
were these effects, that hopes were once excited of 
being able to find a relation between the electrical 
and vital forces, and of being able by means of elec- 
tricity to raise the dead. The nerves of the dead 
carcass vibrated, but there was no sensation. 

2. Another assumption of the theory is that sen- 
sation and thought in the elementary forms are 
identical. There are confessedly feelings which 
are not thoughts, as mere "sense feelings." There 
are general states of the human organism which 
may give tone to the activities of the mind, but the 
nervous state and the mental activity can be dis- 
tinguished. 

A sensation is in its most general definition sim- 
ply a mental state. It is the condition of mental 
activity. In this sense it is true that "all know- 
ledge takes its rise in the senses." In the same 
sense it may be said that sensations are "the raw 
materials of consciousness." But sensations are 
not knowledge. We know only when we refer the 
sensation to some external source or to some con- 
dition in ourselves. There must be discrimination 
before there is thought. Before the act of discrim- 
ination there is nothing but the possibility of 



SENSATION. 285 

thought. Groups of sensations do not bring us 
nearer to intelligence, for no number of bare possi- 
bilities constitute a reality. Psychical discrimina- 
tion must not be confounded with physical dis- 
crimination. Molecules by chemical affinities are 
drawn together, each discriminating between those 
for which it has affinities and those for which it 
does not; but sensations which are abstractions, if 
they do not have a subject, or are mere states of 
feelings in nerve centres, have no such affinities. 
Groupings under physical law cannot be metamor- 
phosed into mental facts. Thoughts as transformed 
sensations imply a subject to transform them. 
L,ewes saw this defect in the old sensational philos- 
ophy, and tried to supply it from the social relation, 
from inherited powers. That carries the diffi- 
culty further back, but does not relieve it. The first 
thought — how did it arise? Without a thinking 
subject sensation can never be related to thought. 
Knowledge rises from the senses, and the senses 
are the organs of perception. Sensation is the 
condition of perception, but sensation and percep- 
tion are distinct psychical facts. There must be a 
certain intensity of sensation before there is per- 
ception, but beyond that degree they are in inverse 
ratio. There must be a certain degree of light 



286 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

before there is sight, but the light may be increased 
until there is nothing but sensation. Those senses 
which are richest in sensation are poorest in per- 
ception. So the nervous impulses may be so vio- 
lent as not to be the cause of sensations. Sense is 
overwhelmed by the violence of impulses. Pain 
may grow in intensity until consciousness is lost. 
It is impossible to see the identity of nerve move- 
ments and sensations, and sensations and thought, 
when by increasing the one factor in either group, 
the other factor is destroyed. 

Sensation, so far as it emerges in consciousness, 
is the reaction of a conscious subject upon a nerv- 
ous impulse. The sensation is not in the nerve, 
but in the mind. Until the soul reacts there can 
be no known sensation, and it is unphilosophic to 
reason about that of which we have no possibility 
of knowing anything. The mind cannot grow up 
out of sensation. The effect cannot be its own 
cause. If we start with nothing but neural units, 
we cannot, by any sort of complex compounding, 
arrive at an ego. This summation of his doctrine 
by Mr. L,ewes is, when put in the clear light of 
consciousness, incomprehensible: " Every act of 
consciousness is one; every ego is a unity. But 
analysis which resolves a sensation into its constit- 



SENSATION. 287 

uent neural elements, resolves consciousness into 
its constituent processes and the ego into a con- 
sensus of psychical activities."* That we have 
not misinterpreted consciousness is evident from 
the fact that men everywhere distinguish be- 
tween themselves and their sensations, between 
their sensations and their thoughts, and between 
their psychical activities and themselves. 

3. Materialism assumes that all ideas come 
through the senses. It is true that all knowledge 
has its beginning in the senses. Kant commences 
his Critique of Pure Reason with the remark, 
"That all our knowledge begins with experience 
there can be no doubt." But that does not mean 
that every idea is furnished by the senses. "The 
primitive source of all knowledge," says Hamilton, 
"is in the mind." The senses call out those ideas 
which condition all experience, ideas without 
which experience would be impossible. Material- 
ism has struggled with this problem. Sometimes 
it tries to compound them from the sense impres- 
sion by the principle of association. Sometimes it 
denies them altogether. But they are great facts 
of our mental life, and refuse to be ignored. 
They cannot be resolved into sensations, or re- 

* Problems of Life and Mind, p. 133. 



288 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

manded to the sphere of mere subjectivity. We 
know causes, space, time, identity, beauty, right, 
the axioms of mathematics, the laws of logic. We 
know that they are universal ; but our experience 
can never reach beyond a very limited sphere. 
Since the days of Hume all who have not a theory 
to support have seen that the idea of cause cannot 
come through the sense, for sense gives us only 
succession. If we know it at all, it is by an origi- 
nal power of the mind. The idea of space, of time, 
of beauty, etc., can all be shown to be intuitions of 
the reason, and not of the sense. These ideas do 
not exist in the mind as maxims, but powers which 
are awakened by the first experiences, and must be 
present in the very first sensation that is related to 
knowledge.* 

4. Materialism assumes that the physical forces 
can be converted into sensations. As "light is 
converted into heat, and heat into chemical changes, 
and chemical changes into electricity, and electric- 
ity back to light, thus completing the circuit," so 
by another circuit physical powers may be changed 
into sensations. Sensations are, therefore, the pro- 
ducts of mechanical and chemical laws, to be in- 
cluded under them and explained by them. But 

* See McCosh's Intuitions for a more thorough discussion. 



SENSATION. 289 

we have already seen that this assumption is 
wholly unproved. It ignores the great difference 
in kind. The mechanical and chemical laws pro- 
duce motion cognizable by the senses, but sensa- 
tions are cognizable only by consciousness. It 
unites phenomena between which there is a great 
chasm across which no bridge has been found. 

Materialism, if these points are made out, fails, 
therefore, to explain the phenomena of sensation. 
It does not account either for the details or general 
fact. This failure has been admitted by eminent 
authorities. Mr. Tyndall said in his address before 
the British Association:* " The passage from the 
physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of 
consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a 
definite thought and a definite molecular action in 
the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess 
the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment 
of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a 
process of reasoning from the one phenomenon to 
the other. Were our mind and sense so expanded, 
strengthened and illuminated as to enable us to see 
and feel the very molecules of the brain, were we 
capable of following all their motions, all their 
groupings, all their electric discharges, if such 

*Aug., 1868. 
13 



290 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

there be, and were we intimately connected with 
the corresponding states of thought and feeling, 
we should probably be as far as ever from the solu- 
tion of the problem. The chasm between the two 
classes of phenomena would still remain intellecu- 
ally impassable." DuBois-Reymond, whose name 
has been associated with some important discover- 
ies in the modes of action of the nerves, says: "If 
we possessed an absolutely perfect knowledge of 
the body, including the brain and all changes in it, 
the psychical states known as sensations would be 
as incomprehensible as now. For the very highest 
knowledge we could get would reveal to us only 
matter in motion, and the connection between any 
motions of any atoms in my brain, and such unique 
undeniable facts as that I feel pain, smell a rose, 
see red, is thoroughly incomprehensible." * 

Materialism is left with the difficulty of ascrib- 
ing incompatible phenomena to the same substance. 

* Quoted by Dewey. 






CHAPTER XVI. 

THE IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 

T)Y the immateriality of the soul we mean that it. 
U is a substance which is not matter. Material 1 
substances are made up of parts into which they 
can be resolved. Only atoms, the ultimate units, 
are indecomposable. When we say that the mind 
is immaterial, we deny that it has parts or is com- 
posed of atoms into which it can be dissolved.. 
Simplicity is used in the same sense. The judg- 
ment is negative. The word spirituality expresses 
more. It not only denies that the soul is material, 
but affirms that it has intelligence and free will. 
It defines by involving two of the characteristics 
of the substance. 

The proof of the immateriality of the soul is 
not essential to the argument for its immortality. 
Tertullian held that the mind is corporeal. "All 
things which exist have body. There is nothing 
incorporeal except the non-existent." He sup- 
posed that the soul could not be acted upon by 
bodies unless it was itself a body. He thought the 

(291) 



292 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

soul substance was like air, and was luminous and 
delicate, in form like the body. Arnobius also 
believed that the soul was material, and denied, 
therefore, its natural immortality. He taught 
that immortality was conferred by the grace of 
God. Augustine, Nemesius, Mamertius and Clau- 
dianus emphasized its immateriality, and had 
much to do with shaping the opinion of the subse- 
quent ages upon this subject. 

But the immateriality of the soul does not nec- 
essarily involve its immortality. It is a depend- 
ent being. It does not have the grounds of exist- 
ence in itself. As it began to be, so it can also 
cease to exist. It will continue only so long as the 
force persists which brought it into being. Its im- 
mortality depends upon the purpose of God. If 
He so wills, He can destroy it. Unless He up- 
holds it, though it is a simple substance, it must 
sink back into annihilation. 

If it were material, it might be immortal. Ter- 
tullian had a false philosophy, but it was not ab- 
surd. God can give immortality to a material 
being as well as to immaterial ones. He who has 
held the world together through all the geologic 
ages, can hold it forever if He so desires. Knapp 
says, "From the argument of the simplicity of the 



THE IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 293 

soul, nothing more than the bare possibility of its 
immortality can be shown. But this possibility, 
if it depends merely upon the will of God, is quite 
as obvious, even if the soul has not that absolutely 
simple nature which is ascribed to it."* 

All that is important to our purpose is to show 
that the soul is a real being, distinct from the 
body, and is not necessarily involved in the fate of 
the body. This has been done in the preceding 
chapters. We have seen that nothing is known to 
science that makes the Christian hope a delusion. 
We have seen also that according to the expressed 
judgment of some of the greatest savants, science 
will never on its present lines make such dis- 
coveries. 

But it is not doubtful that the soul is immaterial. 
Materiality is a complex term, comprehending a 
number of qualities which belong to the subjects 
of external experience. The mind knows certain 
objects as extended, impenetrable, rough or 
smooth, cold or hot, figured, colored, elastic, etc. 
We call all these extra-mental objects material. 
Further than these qualities we do not know the 
essence of matter. W T e do not ascribe these 
qualities to mind. Not one is applicable to mind 

* Theology, p. 522. 



294 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

as it reveals itself in consciousness. Its qualities 
are to feel, think, remember, imagine, love, fear, 
hope, rejoice, will. We cannot know anything of 
the essence of mind beyond the facts thus mani- 
fested, but we must regard the substance as 
different and to express the distinction we call it 
immaterial, spiritual being. 

This immateriality alone is consistent with the 
great utterances of consciousness as to its indivis- 
ible unity, its self-activity, its identity, and its 
personality. To deny these utterances is to over- 
turn all certainty and end with intellectual 
suicide. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 

THE objection offered against the argument of 
Bishop Butler for a future life was that it 
proved too much, and therefore proved nothing. 
It was said that it would prove the immortality of 
brutes as well as of man, but as they were certainly 
not immortal, it did not prove a future life for 
man. The same objection is brought against any 
metaphysical argument. In making good the de- 
fense of our faith, it is necessary to consider it. 

It is commonly taken for granted that the brute 
perishes altogether at death. Men believe it with- 
out any other reason than common opinion. In 
the time of Butler the reason assigned was the 
brute's want of a moral nature, to which he offered 
two replies: (i) That a moral nature is not essen- 
tial to immortality. (2) That for aught we know 
they may have an undeveloped moral nature. 
The infant gives no more evidence of such nature 
than the brute, and if we had known mankind 
only in childhood, we would have as good ground 

(295) 



296 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

for denying in them a moral faculty as we now 
have for denying it in the brute. 

But the question cannot be settled solely upon 
the fact of a moral nature. Has the animal intel- 
ligence? If so, is it a function of the animal or- 
ganism, or is it the function of a distinct im- 
material principle? In what respect is its mind 
like man's? Does the mere fact of intelligence 
warrant a belief in another life? 

It was quite customary for a long time to call all 
mental activities in the brute mere instinct, but 
the study of comparative psychology has collected 
a mass of evidence which compels us to make a 
distinction between instinct and animal intelli- 
gence. Few who have kept pace with the investi- 
gations stimulated by the theory of evolution will 
deny the fact of intelligence in the higher order 
of brutes. 

Instinct is defined by Dr. Valentine to be "an 
effective blind tendency in animals towards specific 
kinds of action for self-preservation and the con- 
tinuance of the species, regulative of the appetites 
and of various functional capacities."* It has been 
called a law of action, directed by an innate im- 
pulse to some end which the animal does not 1111- 

* Natural Theology, p. 116. 



IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 297 

derstand. It is a law, because it works uniformly. 
It is distinguished from mechanical laws by the 
fact that there is consciousness of the action. It is 
distinguished from intelligence by its want of a 
conception of the end of the action. There is no 
free choice, but a blind impulse. "It works out," 
as Dr. Carpenter says, u a design formed for, not 
by it, and the tendency to which is embodied, as 
it were, in its organization." With instinct there 
is almost always found, as Huber has said, an ele- 
ment of reason and judgment. Even the amoeba 
has a supposed trace of consciousness. The ele- 
ment of judgment is the basis of modified instincts 
which Romanes and others have clearly marked 
out. The bee, which exhibits instinct so strik- 
ingly as to be taken usually as an illustration, also 
furnishes evidence of activities implying judg- 
ment. The bird builds its nest according to in- 
stinct, but there is something more when it sees 
the failing limb and supports it by cords. So the 
spider by something more than law observes its 
falling net and strengthens it. Instinct runs up 
through the whole order of animals. We see it 
clearly in the dog and " the half reasoning ele- 
phant." We find it still in man, but overshadowed 
after the earlier days of infancy by his higher 
faculties. 



298 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The animals of the orders above the lowest have 
a nervous mechanism on the same general plan 
with the human. They have efferent and afferent 
nerves, spinal cord and cerebrum and cerebellum. 
The two brains are in proportions different from 
man's, but both exist. The spinal cord in the ani- 
mal, especially in the lower, has more important 
functions than in man. Brainless frogs are said to 
be able to discriminate between their male and 
female fellows. But there is the same general use 
of the cord in both. Animals have the five special 
senses. They have eyes, ears, touch, smelling, and 
taste, formed as ours are and performing the same 
functions. By these organs they discriminate 
between the objects of sense. They do perceive ; 
though perception has been denied them, because 
in perception we distinguish between self and the 
object, the ego and the non-ego, and they have no 
self. The animal probably does not say to itself, 
u this is I," but it does distinguish between itself 
as an object and other objects. It has some sort of 
self-consciousness. Perception in the high degree 
in which we have it, they do not have, because 
they do not possess some of our higher faculties; 
but there is no reason for denying them perception 
altogether. Perception is an act of intellect. 



IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 299 

The animals have memory. Within certain 
limits they can be taught, and that implies 
memory. The dog recognizes his master after 
weeks of absence — he remembers him. The 
frightened horse shies when he returns to the 
place where he was frightened, because he remem- 
bers the fright and looks out for the danger. This 
has been called association; but the great law of 
memory is association, and the brute remembers, 
as we do, from associated objects. The animal 
memory is perhaps always spontaneous and differs 
from ours in having no power of voluntarily 
recalling an absent object. 

The animal has some power of imagination. 
This is seen in the dreams of dogs. 

They have the faculty of comparison and draw- 
ing conclusions. They have manifested no power 
of abstract notions. Their knowledge seems to be 
limited to individuals. They do not speak, not 
so much because they do not have the physical 
organs as because they have no general ideas. 
The parrot pronounces words, yet never talks. 

The animal has appetites. Its desires growing 
out of its physical organization are like those 
which belong to man. It has fears, at least in the 
presence of immediate danger. It has affections 



300 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

and sympathies. Many of them are gregarious 
because drawn by sympathy. A horse will leave a 
better pasture simply to be with another horse. 
Domestic animals respond to human kindness and 
return marks of affection. * 

All these things are mental. They have none 
of the characteristics of matter. There is no more 
length, breadth, and thickness to the memory or 
affection of an animal than there is to correspond- 
ing acts in man; and if these things imply an 
immaterial substance in man, they must also in 
the brute. If these acts be set down to the animal 
organism as mere functions of it, we can not save 

* Among a great number of instances we may take the 
following as illustrating several points in animal intelligence: 
"The anthropoid ape, Mafuka, kept lately in the Zoological 
Gardens at Dresden, saw how the door of her cage was un- 
locked, and not only did it herself, but even stole the key and 
hid it under her arm for future use; after watching the 
carpenter she seized his brad-awl and bored holes with it 
through the little table she had her meals on; at her meals she 
not only filled her own cup from the jug, but what is more 
remarkable, she carefully stopped pouring before it ran over. 
The death of this ape had an almost human pathos; when her 
friend, the director of the gardens, came to her, she put her 
arms around his neck, kissed him three times, and then lay 
down on her bed, and giving him her hand, fell into her last 
sleep." Tylor's Anthropology, p. 51. 



IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 301 

a distinct entity in man. Within a certain sphere 
there is a likeness too marked to be ignored, and 
if these are the products of matter the higher 
faculties of man, which grow out of and depend 
upon the lower, are also. 

This has led some to believe in the immortality 
of brutes. Agassiz said, " Most of the arguments 
of philosophy in favor of the immortality of man 
apply equally to the permanency of the immaterial 
principle in other living things. May I not add 
that a future life, in which man should be deprived 
of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual 
and moral improvement which result from the 
contemplation of the harmonies of an organic 
world, would involve a lamentable loss? And may 
we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined 
worlds and all their inhabitants in the presence of 
their Creator as the highest conception of para- 
dise?"* If the argument for the immortality of 
man rested exclusively or chiefly upon the fact 
that the soul is an immaterial principle, it would 
include the brutes, but the argument proves only 
the possibility. We are not authorized to go 
further than to say that the animal may survive 
the death of the body. 

* Essay on Classification, quoted by Cook, Biology, p. 209. 



302 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

The question lias been discussed by philosophers 
whether the mind of the animal differs from man 
in kind or in degree. They have not always fully 
understood each other, and have disputed often 
when they were substantially agreed. The old 
philosophers, from Aristotle to Descartes, held that 
the difference was only in degree. Descartes 
taught that the brutes were automata. Locke and 
his school ascribed their actions to association and 
the power of habit. Reid and Stewart returned 
more to the theory of Descartes. Huxley revives 
the mechanical view of Descartes and extends it 
to human actions. Bowen opposes the doctrine 
of difference of degree and regards it as of kind. 
If by kind is meant an entire difference in all fac- 
ulties, there is only a difference in degree; but if 
only a wider range of powers, it is a difference in 
kind. The somnambulist does not perceive pre- 
cisely as a man awake, but it is not an absolutely 
different kind. But man perceives more, remem- 
bers better, reasons more correctly than the brute 
in things common to both, and has faculties of 
which the brute gives no intimation. There is no 
evidence of their having reason or the faculty of 
knowing the supersensible. They have some kind 
of sense of the beautiful, as the bird of its own 



IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 303 

song and of the music of an instrument, or as the 
peacock of its own gaudy colors; but it may be 
only the beauty of sense, the pleasurable emotions 
from harmonious physical sensations. There are 
some things pleasant to our feelings, as soft light 
or soft sounds, and other things disagreeable, awak- 
ening a feeling known as "creeping of the flesh," 
and that sense in the brute which appears to be 
that of the beautiful may be of no higher order 
than this. They do not appreciate the beauty of 
art. They know nothing of the principles of 
philosophy. It is very questionable whether any 
animal has been able really to count at all. It is 
certain that they know nothing of abstract rela- 
tions of time and space. They have never indi- 
cated anything of a moral nature* The dog of 
Sir Walter Scott is said to have manifested shame 
after actions for which he had before been rebuked, 
but even if it were not a fear of being again 
scolded, it was a long remove from a moral feeling. 
When we compare the intelligence of animals 
among themselves, we are often very much sur- 
prised at the brightness of a few; but if we com- 
pare these same animals with man, the highest 
intelligence does not rise above the low order of 
idiocy. 



304 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

This vast difference in degree has its bearing 
upon the argument for a future life. So far as the 
evidence rests upon the higher powers of man, it 
does not apply to the brutes. The animal shows 
an instinctive dread of death, — it is Nature's mode 
of enforcing self-preservation, — but the animal 
evinces no idea or hope of immortality. This 
pledge of a future life has not been given it. It 
knows nothing of God, and has no longings for 
fellowship with Him. It has no aspirations above 
mere sensual enjoyment. It has no conception of 
a moral law. Justice is entirely beyond the range 
of its mental horizon. It has therefore no hope or 
fear of future rewards and punishments. While 
therefore it may possibly, because of its immaterial 
principle, live after death, it has no promise writ- 
ten in its nature such as man possesses. 

The reason against believing in their immortality 
has been forcibly put by Julius Mullen "What is 
there to make these lower individual existences in 
nature immortal ? They are only exemplars or 
samples of their species, kind, and so forth, but 
they possess no individuality of any significance in 
itself, or worth preserving; they simply serve as 
instruments whereby the species manifests itself 
and secures its continuance by the production of 



IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 305 

others like them. They are insusceptible of any 
real individuality for this very reason — because 
there is no personal centre, no ego in them, self- 
conscious, distinguishing itself from others, and 
assuming certain relations by voluntary self-deter- 
mination. It is only around such a centre as this 
that any definite individuality can be formed; such 
a centre alone has the power of attracting and com- 
bining into a harmonious whole the manifold ele- 
ments, without which it would merely coexist and. 
then be dispersed again in the general tide of 
things. While the lower existences in nature are- 
merely passive instruments in relation to their 
species, personal beings can distinguish themselves,, 
not only theoretically by making their species the- 
object of their consciousness, but practically by a 
free resolve either to a loving surrender to their 
species or a selfish abandonment of it." * The 
brute is bound up with nature. It may have will,, 
but it is not free. It has affections, but they are 
linked with their sensuous desires. They have 
sympathies, but they are not altruistic. These 
and similar facts indicate that with them death 
ends all. 

The Bible makes no positive declarations upon, 

* Doctrine of Sin, vol. ii, p. 288. 



306 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

this subject. We ought not to be surprised at this 
silence, for the Bible was not intended to gratify 
curiosity, but to teach us our relation to God and 
our duty to Him. The destiny of brutes does not 
concern our salvation, and it did not fall within 
the purpose of God's revelation. Solomon inti- 
mated that they perish. "Who knoweth the spirit 
of man that goeth upward and the spirit of a beast 
that goeth downward to the earth ?" * Paul is 
thought by some to teach the contrary in that 
difficult passage in Romans: "The creature itself 
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption 
into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." f 
Wesley J interprets this as a declaration concerning 
brutes. He argues their immortality upon the 
ground of their undeserved sufferings. But the 
great body of commentators take a different view, 
some understanding it lb apply exclusively to man, 
and others to the system to which man belongs. 

When we sum up the evidence, we dare not say 
that the brutes are not immortal, but we are forced 
to admit that the weight of the proof is against 
their immortality. And this review shows that if 
we were certain that they are annihilated at death, 
we may still believe on both rational and Scrip- 
tural grounds in our own immortality. 

*Ecc. iii. 21. f Rom - ™- 19-22. J Sermon I<XV. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 

H^HB history of a doctrine or belief gives us an 
-*• important view of it. We can not fully under- 
stand it until we know the stages through which 
it has passed, the grounds upon which it was held, 
and the errors from which it has been discriminated. 
No question of truth can be settled by vote, yet 
there is might in a majority. When we find that 
a majority of those who have given careful study 
to a subject are of the same opinion with ourselves 
we feel strengthened in it, but when they hold 
the contrary we go back and re-examine our 
premises and processes. In a former chapter we 
reviewed the evidence of the universal belief in a 
future life. In this we will give a brief sketch of 
the opinions of philosophers as to the nature and 
evidence of the immortality of the soul. It may 
be necessary in a few instances to repeat facts 
given in the study of special subjects. 

The oldest of the Greek schools of philosophy 
was the Ionic. The cast was naturally material- 

(307) 



308 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

istic. The great world with its mysterious origin 
and laws first invited study. Starting with ma- 
terial principles, the school became partly panthe- 
istic and partly atheistic. Thales (640 B. C.) re- 
garded water as the original principle of all things, 
and the world as a great organism. Life was sup- 
posed to be the sole power. We have no reliable 
information in regard to his doctrine of God and of 
the soul, except that he called the soul u a self-mov- 
ing power." Anaximander thought that matter is 
infinite, and is governed solely by mechanical laws. 
He is said to have believed that the soul is aeriform. 
Anaximines took air as the original principle. 
He identified the soul with the vital force. Hera- 
clitus posited fire, and held all things to be in a 
perpetual flow. The soul is an emanation from 
the universal mind.* Diogenes of Apollonia re- 
vived the doctrine of Anaximines, but refined it. 
He posited ether. He opposed the doctrine of 
dualism which began to be taught. Pheracydes, 
who is sometimes classed with this school, taught 
that the soul is immortal. 

The Italic school started with an intellectual 
principle, and became idealistic. Pythagoras (580 

*"If he materialized mind he also spiritualized matter." 
Butler's Au. Philos., vol. i, p. 297. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 309 

B. C.) took numbers as the original source, and 
defined the soul to be the harmony of the body. 
He believed that it is an emanation from the cen- 
tral fire, capable of combining with any body and 
destined to a union in succession with several. 
None of the doctrines of his school are more cer- 
tainly traced back to him than that of metempsy- 
chosis. Philolaus first published the doctrines of 
the school. The names of more than twenty of 
his disciples have come down to us as eminent 
teachers. Alcmaeon taught that the soul is seated 
in the brain, up to which all sensation is conducted. 
The Eleatics were idealistic pantheists. They 
speculated upon the nature of being. They be- 
came skeptical upon all phenomena, denying the 
credibility of the senses. Xenophanes (570 B. C.) 
found the highest being in God, one and unchange- 
able. Parmenides abstracted that being still more, 
and denied all motion. Zeno in defending the 
doctrines of the school became the first of logicians. 
Melissus concluded the system by denying space. 
Parmenides regarded the reasonable mind the same 
as the soul, which he supposed to be located in the 
abdomen. The soul which has been driven into 
the world returns to the bosom of the One. Empe- 
docles is often classed with the Eleatics. His phi- 



310 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

losophy was a compound of the then existing 
schools. He thought that the soul of man is the 
correlative of the soul of the world, and modified 
the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration to suit 
his system. 

The Atomists were gross materialists. L,eu- 
cippus (about 450 B. C.) posited atoms with two 
principles — space and vacuum; therefore all things 
were governed by necessity. Democritus carried 
out still further the theory. He said that the 
atoms were distinguished from each other only 
geometrically. The soul is composed of rounded 
atoms. The body is the tent of the soul. The 
soul is the noblest part of man. The names of a 
few of the adherents of the school have been pre- 
served. Diagoras was banished from Athens on 
the charge of Atheism. 

The Sophists were not serious philosophers. 
They were brilliant rhetoricians, with some philos- 
ophic acuteness. They were skeptics. They at- 
tempted to demonstrate the impossibility of knowl- 
edge. Protagoras (480 B. C.) was the first. He 
located the soul in the senses. He was followed 
by Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus, and Euthydemus. 
Critias, infamous from the part he took in the 
trial of Socrates, belonged to this school, and lo- 
cated the soul in the blood. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 31 1 

Anaxagoras is usually classed with the Tonic 
school, but he is distinguished from them in im- 
portant particulars. He was born about 500 B. C. 
He saw that the Ionic and Eleatic schools had not 
recognized sufficiently clearly the difference be- 
tween matter and mind, and brought out the over- 
looked element. He separated God from the 
world, and announced principles of theism. He 
taught that mind is distinguished from matter by 
its simplicity, independence, knowledge, and su- 
perior power over matter. He is supposed to have 
borrowed his ideas from Hermotimus, who, accord- 
ing to Pliny, believed that the soul often wanders 
to a great distance from the body, in order to ob- 
tain the knowledge denied it whilst residing in its 
tenement. Archelaus, trying to conciliate the new 
with the old, fell back towards materialism. 

With Socrates (369 B. C.) philosophy entered 
upon a new career. Cicero said that he called it 
from the clouds to dwell in the houses of men. 
He believed that God is a rational being, and is the 
source of moral law. He taught the distinction 
between mind and body, and that personality was 
in the mind; that the soul is like God, and there- 
fore immortal. He did not attain to absolute cer- 
tainty of a future life, but to such a strong faith 



312 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

that he could talk as composedly to his friends in 
the presence of death about his departure, as if he 
were only leaving for a short visit to one of the 
neighboring islands. Xenophon, among those who 
followed closely their master, is best known to us. 
The names of ^Sschines, Crito, and a few others, 
are found in history. 

There were three schools formed by "partial 
disciples." The founder of each took some part 
of the teaching of Socrates and developed an in- 
dependent system. Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, re- 
garded pleasure as the end of life, and became one 
of the forerunners of Epicurus. His aim was 
moral rather than metaphysical. Antisthenes was 
the founder of the Cynics. He taught that virtue 
is the only good, and the essence of virtue is self- 
control, and was a forerunner of the Stoics. Euclid 
was the founder of the Megaric school, far more 
profound than either of the other two, but panthe- 
istic. Ritter says that the Megarians acknowledged 
.a supreme universal rationality, but were unable to 
combine with it personal consciousness, and thus 
became involved in inexplicable opposition to all 
human notions.* 

Plato, one of the pupils and interpreters of Soc- 

* History, vol. iii, p. 639. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 313 

rates, by his own profound thought became the 
head of a school, and remains a master in the phil- 
osophic world. He distinguishes between the 
mind and all corporeal things. Fire and earth, 
with air and water are the fundamental elements 
of matter. The soul is eternal, and is a self-acting 
energy. The divine idea is manifested in the soul. 
He taught that the mortal animal must consist of 
soul and body. He distinguishes two component 
parts of the soul — the mortal and immortal parts — 
with an intermediate link. The first is the ani- 
mating principle ; the intermediate, the active 
faculties or impulses ; and the third, the rational 
soul, generated by the Supreme Being. The ra- 
tional soul had a pre-existence, and is brought to 
occupy a body because of sin. It retains the ideas 
of its former existence, and by these it is able to 
return to its happy condition. He argues its im- 
mortality from (a) its nature as self-moving ; (b) 
the life of the soul which is not destroyed by 
moral evil ; (c) the goodness of God, who cannot 
will that so beautiful an object should be destroyed; 
(d) the desire of knowledge ; (e) contrarieties in 
the world — the living die, so the dead must return 
to life ; (g) innate knowledge, which is a kind of 
reminiscence ; {h) and from the indivisibility of 
14 



314 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the soul, as seen from the fact of its knowing 
simple and indestructible objects. A dead soul 
is a contradiction. He recognized the influence 
of the body upon the soul, and thus accounted for 
the ignorance of childhood ; but the dependence 
is not essential, but relative. 

Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, was perhaps the 
greatest of all the ancient philosophers. He was 
a natural philosopher as well as metaphysician. 
He was the critic of the preceding schools, and his 
criticism became one of the very best sources of 
the history of that period. He examines the doc- 
trines of his predecessors in regard to the soul, and 
is not satisfied with any. The principle of soul 
diffused through the world, as taught by Thales, 
would imply either that all things are animated, 
or that soul was superadded to some matter; but 
either is contrary to facts, for all admit the dis- 
tinction between animate and inanimate, and also 
between the soul of fire and soul as the principle 
of life and thought. The doctrine of the Atomists 
lost sight of the distinction between the mere mov- 
ing principle and the mind in its higher faculties. 
He ridicules the doctrine of Aristoxenes, that the 
soul is the harmony of the body. The health of 
the body is its harmony. He refutes the doctrine 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 315 

of the self-moving nature of the soul. Motion 
implies place. Self-motion would include the 
possibility of violent impulse to motion and rest. 
The soul moves the body, but its own motion is 
that in which it participates with the body which 
moves. If the soul be essentially self-moving, it 
can not be moved by other objects; but this is con- 
tradictory of the facts of sensation. For these and 
other reasons he rejects the doctrine of a self- 
moving number as taught by Pythagoras. 

He distinguishes between the body and soul, 
and between the nutritive, sensitive and rational 
soul. To understand his doctrine, it is necessary 
to refer to his classification of causes. He recog- 
nized four causes: material, formal, efficient, and 
final. The material is that of which a thing is 
formed, as gold. The formal is the figure or form 
given, according to a plan, as the ring. The 
efficient is the energy that gives the form. The 
body is the matter given a definite form. The 
matter of the body is mere capacity, and the form 
is act. Body considered separately is materially 
and potentially a living substance. The soul is 
that which gives form, and is the first energy, 
u the first entelechy of a natural organic body, 
which body itself has life potentially." ( 'The 



316 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

soul is not without the body, nor the body without 
the soul." This is said of the nutritive and sensi- 
tive soul. The soul and body are correlates. 
The plant has only a nutritive soul. The animal 
has both nutritive and sentient soul. Man has in 
addition a noetic soul. While Aristotle did not 
draw a sharp line between life with and without 
consciousness, he did between the principle which 
feels and the principle which knows. The nutri- 
tive and sensitive souls are inseparable from the 
body and perish with it, but the noetic is divine 
and immortal. 

For two or three centuries the followers of Aris- 
totle applied themselves more directly to the study 
of nature, modified in many ways the teaching of 
Aristotle, and took a strong naturalistic turn. 
Theophrastus leaned to the idea of immanence, 
but admitted a substantial existence to the nous 
and regarded it the divine part of man. Strabo 
denied any soul separable from the body, and lo- 
cated the soul in the head between the eyebrows. 
Dicsearch supposed only one universal vital and 
sensitive force, which is temporarily individualized 
in different bodies. Later Peripatetics returned 
more closely to the doctrines of Aristotle, among 
whom Andronicus, Boethus of Sidon, and Alex- 
ander Aphrodisias, became noted. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 317 

There was a strong tendency in the Greek mind, 
during the political decline, towards skepticism. 
Pyrrho (340 B. C.) taught that real knowledge is 
impossible because real things are inaccessible to 
human faculties, and that a wise man must remain 
always tranquil. Timon was his most famous dis- 
ciple in that century. The school repeatedly ap- 
peared in subsequent ages. 

Epicurus at the same time (341 B. C.) became 
the founder of a school called, from himself, Epi- 
cureans. He was a decided materialist. He took 
the doctrine of Democritus as the basis of his 
physics, and of Aristippus as that of his ethics. 
Epicurus held that the soul is corporeal, else it 
could not influence the body. Its elementary 
principles are heat, ether, spirit, and a peculiar 
matter which is the ground of sensibility. The 
rational soul is in the heart; the parts of the soul 
are scattered through the body. The soul is not 
immortal, because it depends upon a physical en- 
velope, and because it is composed of atoms. It is 
born with the body and perishes with it. The low 
moral tone of this philosophy suited the degenerate 
age, and it had numerous adherents in that and 
several successive centuries. Many of his princi- 
ples in physics are regarded to-day as sound doc- 
trine by the materialists. 



318 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Zeno (362 B. C.) was the founder of the contem- 
porary and rival school. The physics were 
founded upon the Heraclitian philosophy, and the 
ethics were taken from the Cynics. He held in 
regard to the soul that it is an emanation from the 
Deity, a part severed from Him. The soul and God 
react upon each other. While the soul is dis- 
tinguishable from the body and outlives its organ, 
it is not necessarily immortal, and can live at 
longest only to the end of the world period. The 
later Stoics were more positive in their belief in 
immortality. 

To earnest minds there was something very 
attractive in the Stoic philosophy, and there is a 
long list of eminent names among its adherents. 
Cleanthes and Chrysippus, teachers in the original 
school, Diogenes the Babylonian, Panaetius of 
Rhodes, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, 
were among the noteworthy Stoics. 

In the interval between the deaths of the great 
masters and the establishment of Christianity 
there were a number of new schools formed by the 
revival of the older ones and by new combinations 
of them. There were the Neo-Pythagoreans, the 
Pythagorizing Platonists, the Neo-Platonists, the 
Jewish Alexandrian, the Skeptics and the Eclectics, 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 319 

besides the three schools into which the disciples 
of Plato divided. Some of these extended several 
centuries into the Christian period. We will 
commence with the older. 

The followers of Plato are arranged in three 
schools, called the Old, the Middle and the New 
Academy. The Old Academy lost the spirit and 
power of Plato. Speusippus was at the head. The 
soul was defined by him as extension shaped by 
numbers. Xenocrates identified ideas with num- 
bers, and taught that the soul is a self-moving num- 
ber. This school remained spiritualistic. The Mid- 
dle Academy was skeptical. Carneades is best 
known from his visit to Rome, during which he 
disgusted Cato by his contradictory discourses on 
justice. The New Academy returned to dogma- 
tism. These three chief schools were divided into 
four or five tendencies, in which dogmatism and 
skepticism struggled for the ascendency, with the 
ultimate triirrnph of the former. 

The Jewish Alexandrian school was a sort of 
eclecticism, but with Platonic elements predomina- 
ting along with Judaism. Philo (25 B. C.) was 
the most distinguished representative. He held 
that there are two souls in man — a reasonable and 
an animal soul. The reasonable has three facul- 



320 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

ties: sensation, understanding, and language. The 
reasonable soul is a portion of the divine essence. 
The soul preexisted in bodies. It is immortal. 

About the same time there sprang up another 
eclectic school, formed of Platonic and Pythagorean 
elements. Eudorus and Arius Didymus (25 B. C.) 
were eminent among the teachers. Later, Plu- 
tarch, both as historian and philosopher, became 
renowned. His essays have made his belief in a 
future life well known. Maximus of Tyre taught 
that the soul is composed of both mortal and im- 
mortal elements. Instinct belongs to the mortal; 
intelligence to the immortal. Galen, the physi- 
cian, taught, but not without a feeling of doubt, 
the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul. He emphasized the importance of a religious 
conviction of the existence of God and providence. 
Apuleius taught that the soul has three faculties, 
and is immutable and immortal. Numenius agrees 
with Philo in much part as to the preexistent state 
of the soul. 

While these Platonic schools were developing, 
there was a revival of the school of Pythagoras by 
Figulus (50 B. C). Apollonius of Tyana, a re- 
puted worker of miracles, is best known among 
the teachers. He believed that there is an affinity 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 32 1 

between men and animals, and thus explained 
metempsychosis. The school became extinct after 
Secundus, about the middle of the second Chris- 
tian century. 

Skepticism had an able advocate during this 
period in Sextus Empiricus (70 B. C). He in- 
clined somewhat to materialism^ but thought we 
can know very little about the soul. 

Lucretius (52 B. C), taught Epicureanism im 
Rome. He personified Nature, and was grossly 
materialistic. He taught that atoms were self- 
moving. He had considerable influence upon the 
masses, but left no decided impression upon the 
philosophic world. 

Cicero (43 B. C), eminent as orator, statesman 
and philosopher, was an eclectic in philosophy. 
He discussed in different connections the nature 
of the soul, and its immortality. Among other 
arguments for a future life, he presented the fol- 
lowing: (a) The authority of all antiquity; (b) 
The universal concern about futurity revealed in 
the care for fame, for posterity, for the disposition 
of property, and for the establishment of laws for 
succeeding generations; (c) The self-motion of the 
soul; (d) The marks of divinity in the soul. 
11 Whatever thinks and understands and wills, and 



2,22 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

has a principle of life, is heavenly and divine, and 
on that account must necessarily be eternal." 
Man only has a knowledge of God, and this proves 
his divine origin and destiny. His prudential 
argument is often quoted: "If he is correct in his 
faith, he will be greatly the gainer; but if mis- 
taken, the Epicurean philosophers will not be able 
to laugh at him for his mistake." 

After the introduction of Christianity, the 
Platonic philosophy appeared under a new form 
known as the Neo-Platonic school. It shows the 
influence of Christianity, though its most eminent 
teachers remained heathen, and some of them were 
decided opponents of the new religion. The 
originator of the school was Ammonius Saccas 
(157 A. D.), who is commonly believed to have 
been born a Christian, but who returned to 
heathenism. Nemesius of Emessa has preserved 
some fragments* in which Ammonius advocates 
the spirituality and immortality of the soul. There 
are two natures, one corporeal and the other spir- 
itual, influencing each other, but in real essence 
the opposites of each other. The soul has life, and 
must be different from that which is dead. 

Plotinus (206 A. D.), belongs to this school. 

* Ueberweg doubts the genuineness of these fragments. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 323 

He was not only by far the ablest and most pro- 
found among the members of it, but also the most 
original thinker since Aristotle. He taught an 
ideal pantheism to which the philosophy of Schel- 
ling bears a marked resemblance. The One sends 
forth an image of itself. The image turns to its 
source and becomes nous. The nous produces 
soul. The soul being only an image, it is neces- 
sarily inferior to the nous. The soul turns towards 
the nous, as the nous turned toward the One, and 
it also turns to matter, which it produces. The 
soul has a divisible and also an indivisible element. 
It is not corporeal ; nor is it the harmony or entel- 
echy of the body, because the nous, memory, per- 
ception and mental force, are all separable from the 
body. The soul is immaterial, but permeates the 
body as fire does the air. It may be said that the 
body is the soul, rather than that the soul is the 
body. There are activities of the soul to which 
the body is not necessary. The soul is entirely in 
the whole body and entirely in every part of it. 
There are two kinds of faculties in the soul; reason 
and sensibility. The former is allied to the nous, 
the latter to the body. 

Porphyry doubted apparitions, but believed in 
the separate existence of the soul. The mind has 



324 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

within itself the reasons for all things, and for this 
reason can operate on the senses even without the 
exciting external causes. The end of philosophy 
is the salvation of the soul. 

Proclus distinguished five orders of faculties in 
the mind. The second order manifests the soul's 
connection with the body, but reveals also its own 
individuality. The fifth relates to the highest 
truths, and gradually assimilates our nature to the 
Divine Being. By nature the soul is divine. 
Midway between the sensuous and the divine 
order of faculties there is freedom, and the soul is 
responsible for its actions. 

Iamblichus departed so far from the principles 
of his school as to be set down as the founder of 
another. He fell into superstition, and defined 
with considerable minuteness the various classes of 
angels and demons. There is an intellectual and 
sensible world, but the sensible is the shadow of 
the intellectual. 

Bcethius, in the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, 
wrote a treatise on Consolation. With him the 
school ends. 

Early in the Christian era there was a class of 
philosophers known as Gnostics. In religion they 
were eclectics, but they incorporated enough of 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 325 

Christianity into their system to be regarded by 
the Church as heretical Christians. Many of them 
were esteemed in their own day as men of great 
ability and learning. Gnosticism was an earnest 
effort to solve the problems of the world. It was 
imaginative at the expense of the philosophic. 
The greatest names among them were Valentinian, 
Basilides, Bardasanus, and Marcion. There were 
a number of sects, but they were agreed as to the 
two-fold element in the soul, and the importance 
of the intellectual over the sensitive soul. 

The Christian Fathers are usually regarded as 
mere theologians, but most of them had philo- 
sophic training, and some of them were eminent 
as philosophers. Bvery history of philosophy 
gives them prominent places. Some of them ob- 
tained recognition from the most distinguished 
philosophers of their own times. 

Justin Martyr studied the doctrines of the lead- 
ing philosophical schools before he became a Chris- 
tian. He wrote a book on the nature of the soul. 
He had a materialistic view of its nature and de- 
nied its natural immortality, but believed that God 
had conferred endless life upon it as a gift, and that 
future rewards and punishments are to be eternal. 
Tatian, the disciple of Justin, but influenced by 



326 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Gnosticism, thought that there are two souls, the 
one subject to matter and the other an emanation 
from God. The inferior is full of darkness, the 
superior is the image of God. Irenseus denied the 
preexistence and transmigration of souls. Ter- 
tullian taught traducianism, and regarded every 
soul as a branch of Adam's soul. He supposed the 
soul to be material, but of the most refined nature. 
If it were not material it would not be capable of 
suffering, nor its activity be dependent upon the 
condition of the body. Origen taught the pre- 
existence of souls and the freedom of the will. 
Arnobius denied the natural immortality of the 
soul, but held that the Epicurean notion of the 
future life is also false. The soul is neither ma- 
terial nor divine. Lactantius agreed with him in 
denying the conclusiveness of the arguments of 
Plato for immortality, and based a proof upon the 
idea of justice. Without immortality virtue would 
not be adequately rewarded. 

Augustine is not only the greatest theologain, 
but also the greatest philosopher of his age. He 
taught that the soiil is not an attribute of the body, 
but a separate substance. It is not material,' for it 
has thought, remembrance and will, and is without 
any material quality. It feels sensations in every 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 327 

part of the body, and therefore is in every part, 
and in this is unlike corporeal substances, which 
are only in one place at one time. The faculties 
are not like qualities of matter, for they are not 
confined in extent to the mental substratum. It is 
immortal, because it knows eternal truth. It is 
placed in a body for discipline. Its superiority to 
the body is seen in the life, movement and sensa- 
tion which the body obtains from it. It is invisi- 
ble, incorporeal, spiritual. He further argued this 
from the nature of memory. Its life is an essential 
part of its nature. Its future existence is attested 
by its longing after immortal happiness. 

Claudius Mamertus replied to Faustus, a Bishop 
in Gaul, who taught that the soul is a thin air. 
Mamertus argued the immateriality of the soul from 
the image of God, from the illocality of it, from 
the want of quantity, from the fact that it is not 
contained in the body and from its faculty of rea- 
soning. Gregory of Nyssa taught that the soul 
originated simultaneously with the body, is present 
in every part of it, but survives it, and after death 
is an existence independent of space. He believed 
that there are three parts : sensitive, vegetable and 
intellectual life. 

While these Church Fathers differed somewhat 



328 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

as to the nature of the soul, a few holding that it 
is a material substance, yet there is perfect unani- 
mity in believing that it is an existence distinct 
from the body and exists in another state. During 
all that period there is not one voice of any im- 
portance whatever against its immortality. 

In the ninth century Scholasticism arose, ruled 
for a number of centuries, and continued until 
after the Reformation. It was a peculiar form of 
philosophizing, but it rendered the philosophic 
world eminent service. During the earlier period 
Plato's influence preponderated, but subsequently 
gave way to that of Aristotle. The authority of 
the Roman Church set limits to their speculations, 
and these great and acute minds were kept at the 
analysis of admitted principles until they descended 
often to puerilities. John Scotus Brigena was 
the first of the schoolmen. He was a pantheist. 
His philosophy led to a denial of the personal im- 
mortality of man, yet he did not announce that 
conclusion. 

There was a large number of eminent men 
among the schoolmen : Roscellinus, William of 
Champeaux, Gerbert, Lanfranc, Anselm, Abelard, 
Bernard, Walter of Montaigne, Peter Lombard, 
John of Salisbury, Alanus, Amalrich, William of 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BEUEF. 329 

Auvergne, Robert Greathead, John Fidauza, Al- 
bert Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, 
Roger Bacon, William Occam, Peter D'Ailly, 
John Gerson, Eckhart, Groot, John Wessel, and 
others. During this same period were the Arabian 
philosophers, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroes and 
Algazel. Only a few of these were pantheistic. 
All the others were agreed as to the immaterial 
nature of the soul and its future existence. The 
opinions of only a few can be quoted. 

William of Auvergne said that the soul exists 
independently of the body. It needs the body as 
the instrument of sensual functions. It is related 
to the body as the cithern player is to his cithern. 

Albert Magnus held that the active intellect is 
part of the soul, and is that principle in each man 
which gives form and individuality. The think- 
ing and form-giving principle has vegetative, sen- 
sitive, appetitive and motive faculties, and these 
are separable from the body. It is heir to immor- 
tality because of its affinity with God. 

Aquinas maintained that the soul is not material, 
because it is the source of life in living beings, and 
because it knows the nature of all kinds of matter. 
It is an independent existence, because the intellec- 
tual principle works by itself without connection 



330 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

with the body. He asserted its immortality from 
its immateriality, and also from its longing after 
immortality — a longing arising from the power of 
abstracting from every limitation of the present. 
Immortality is common to all -the mental powers, 
because they belong to the same substance. The 
lower powers depend upon the sense for activity, 
but not for existence. The souls of animals, which 
are forms inhering in matter, perish with their 
bodies. He rejected the doctrine of the preexist- 
ence of souls. The soul as the form-giving prin- 
ciple makes a new body after death similar to the 
one now possessed. 

Occam's argument for the separate existence of 
the mind was based on the antagonism between 
science and reason, which could not exist in the 
same substance. 

Scholasticism at length began to decline. The 
disputes between Nominalists and Realists, kept 
up for so many years, had weakened confidence in 
it. The expansion of mind resulting from the 
Crusades, the fall of Constantinople, the invention 
of printing, the discovery of the New World, the 
revival of letters, and the development of natural 
science, made thinking men dissatisfied with the 
methods so long employed. The trammels became 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 331 

oppressive, and the rising spirit of freedom re- 
belled. Attacks were made upon the Scholastics 
both in the interest of religion and of philosophy. 
Bessarion, Pletho, Hermolaus Barbarus, Angelus 
Politianus, Mirandola, Valla, Agricola, Erasmus, 
Vives, and Hutten, were direct or indirect assail- 
ants. The old schools under various modifications 
were revived. Cusanus, a Cardinal, was an eclec- 
tic, combining Platonic, Pythagorean, skeptical 
and mystical principles. Ficinus and Mirandola 
were Platonists. Reuchlin was a Cabbalist. 
Agrippa combined Cabbalism with skepticism. 
Pomponatius was an Aristotelian. He asserted that 
there is no certain natural proof of immortality, 
but believed it on the ground of religion. Vernias, 
his predecessor at Padua, had taught Averroistic 
pantheism, but in his old age was converted to the 
belief in personal immortality. J. C. Scaliger, 
Vanini, a martyr, and Niphus, were also Peripa- 
tetics. Stoicism was advocated by Iyipsius and 
Thomas Gataker. Epicurean physics was taught 
by Gassendi, who has been called the renewer of 
systematic materialism. Telesius and Galileo 
studied natural philosophy. Telesius drew a broad 
distinction between the immortal soul of man and 
the souls of other animals, and held that immor- 



332 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

tality was a gift at conception. Theosophy was 
taught by Paracelsus. Robert Fludd, J. Boehm, 
F. M. Helmont, and others, belonged to the same 
school. Skepticism was almost inevitable. Mon- 
taigne and Charron were the more noted skeptics. 
During these times of philosophic turmoil there 
were a number of independent thinkers. Among 
them, Bruno became eminent by his martyrdom. 
He held a kind of pantheism. God is the imma- 
nent cause of the universe. The stars are moved 
by their souls. The elementary parts of all things 
are monads. The soul is a monad, and is never 
without a body. He believed that man is immortal, 
and based upon this fact the proof of the eternity 
of the world. Campanella held that there is a 
world of incorporeal beings, but believed that 
human souls are corporeal spirits which are warm, 
subtile and light. He proved the immortality of 
the soul from its desire for happiness. Bacon did 
not believe that natural science is able to make 
any positive affirmation as to the nature of the soul 
and of God, but believed that it is sufficient for the 
refutation of atheism. He said that slight tastes 
of philosophy lead to atheism, but fuller draughts 
lead back to religion. He distinguished between 
the spirit, or intellectual soul, and the soul or 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 333 

animal part, and pronounced the first scientifically 
unknowable, but the other may be known to 
science as a thin material substance. 

During this breaking up of old opinions, we 
would not be surprised to find doubts as to a future 
life, but there were none. The skeptics did not 
deny the possibility of it, and some affirmed it is a 
fact. A few were pantheists, but even they did 
not deny future personal immortality. Gassendi, 
the materialist, "decidedly affirms that the evi- 
dences of the soul's immortality are so full, explicit 
and overwhelming that no person can reasonably 
have the smallest doubt upon the point, who will 
set about the investigation in a candid and con- 
siderate spirit."* Hobbes, another materialist, 
held that the soul, though material, was of extreme 
tenuity. The only person of any prominence in 
the literary world who cast doubt upon a future 
life was Bembo, the dissolute Cardinal of Leo X. 
Sixteen hundred years pass without a single phil- 
osopher of any importance avowing the belief that 
there is no existence after death. 

After several centuries from the beginning of the 
reaction against scholasticism, modern philosophy 
emerges. The French claim that Descartes was 

* Blakey. 



334 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the first of modern philosophers. It must be ad- 
mitted that he exerted a deep influence on the 
continent of Europe, and added much to that of 
Bacon in shaping thought in Great Britain. 

Descartes was an extreme Dualist, and he could 
not conceive of any influence of mind upon mat- 
ter. Geulinx tried to develop the theory of com- 
plete independence through "occasionalism," and 
Malebranche by "the vision of God." Spinoza 
came from this school, and propounded a system 
of pantheism that still exerts a deep influence in 
philosophy. Though a pantheist, Spinoza taught 
that the soul as an individual survives the body. 

L,eibnitz also belonged, in some measure, to the 
Descartians, but so modified the philosophy of 
Descartes that he started a new movement and 
remained the philosopher of Germany until the 
rise of Kant. The characterizing feature of his 
system was the idea of the monad. God is the 
first monad. Every soul is a 'monad, and the 
power of acting on itself proves its substantiality. 
The souls of animals are monads having sensation 
and memory. Human souls can have clear, dis- 
tinct, and single adequate ideas. The soul is the 
centre or governing monad of the body, control- 
ling the changes in the monads making up our 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 335 

physical nature. Every soul monad is enveloped 
in a body which it never wholly loses, but it may 
partially lose it. The spiritual nature of the soul 
shows its immortality. Wolf was the great ex- 
pounder of the doctrine of Leibnitz, and his name 
was attached to the system. While some few emi- 
nent men, as Rudiger and Crusius, criticised cer- 
tain features in the system, the list of the followers 
of Leibnitz embraces an immense majority of 
noted professors in Germany for more than a cen- 
tury. 

The eighteenth century carried the reaction 
against ecclesiastical authority over into radical- 
ism. It reached its furthest extreme in France, 
where the Reformation of the Church had been 
least. The French philosophy of that century was 
devoted to political and social questions and gen- 
eral culture, and it gave little attention to the pro- 
founder problems of thought. The philosophic 
principles were naturalistic, with a strong ten- 
dency to materialism. Voltaire, a controlling spirit 
during his life, did not commit himself fully either 
to atheism or materialism. He thought that mat- 
ter might think, that our ideas generally come 
through the senses, but moral ideas spring from our 
nature, and that the belief in a rewarding and pun- 



336 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

ishing God is necessary to moral order. La Mettrie 
avowed gross materialism, and said the soul per- 
ishes with the body. Rousseau, the most brilliant 
writer of his day, and also an acute thinker, was 
a decided opponent of materialism and pantheism, 
and zealously attested his faith both in a personal 
God and personal immortality. Condillac, who 
introduced Locke's philosophy into France, was 
not a materialist. Extended and divisible matter, 
he thought, cannot be the substratum of thought 
and feeling, which are unextended and indivisible. 
Bonnet derived all our representations from sensa- 
tion, but distinguished the mind from the body. 
The mind could do nothing without the body — thus 
approaching in his doctrine a positive materialism. 
De Alembert said we did not have a clear idea of the 
nature of either mind or matter: the relation be- 
tween matter and mind was inscrutable, but that 
matter is intelligent is inconceivable. Diderot, 
after much wavering, reached pantheism. De Hol- 
bach professed atheism. Cabanis, a little later, 
denies the existence of the soul as a being — it is 
only a faculty of the body. The brain secretes 
thought. But he lived to modify very greatly 
his views, and admit an intelligent cause of the 
world. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 337 

After Bacon there were in England some philo- 
sophical writers of prominence and importance 
before the time of Locke. Hooker, his cotempor- 
ary, was a theologian, but he is regarded by Hal- 
lam as the most philosophical writer of his period. 
Davies discussed the nature of the soul and its im- 
mortality. Herbert, of Cherburg, the first of the 
Deists, laid down as one of the five common no- 
tions of natural religion this principle: "There is. 
another life with rewards and punishments." 
Culverwell, Cudworth, More, Whichcote, Chilling- 
worth, and Gale, were men of superior ability. 

Locke is the greatest metaphysician of England! 
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
He was respected by Leibnitz, with whom he cor- 
responded. He was the ruling spirit in his own 
country for a great many years, and his influence 
was very great in France. He taught sensational- 
ism, but not materialism. He regarded the soul as 
immaterial, but thought that God can endow mat- 
ter with the power of thinking. Berkeley was an 
idealist, and believed in a future life of the indi- 
vidual. Hartley carried out the sensationalism of 
Locke, and brought against himself the charge of 
materialism; but he earnestly denied the charge, 
and contested the materalistic conclusions which 
15 



338 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

were drawn from his philosophy. Priestley held 
that the soul is material, but gave a new definition 
of matter. He held that there is a future existence. 
Darwin, who belongs to the same associational 
school with the last two, held that there are two 
substances in nature: spirit producing motion, and 
matter receiving motion. Newton, the great natu- 
ral philosopher, was the friend of Locke, and gave 
some attention to psychology. He thought the 
soul is a distinct substance, and is situated in the 
brain where it perceives the images of things as 
they are introduced. The Deists were free- thinkers, 
but they held to the idea of a future life. Toland, 
Collins, Cooper, Tindal and Morgan assailed reve- 
lation at different points, but admitted a natural 
religion. Here, as in many other cases, the popu- 
lace rushed to conclusions that the teachers never 
admitted. Hume, a profound metaphysician, was 
a philosophic skeptic. He did not commit himself 
to any positive view in religion, though privately 
he said, on one or two occasions, that he did not 
think differently from other men about another life. 
During this century Scotland produced some 
eminent writers besides those already mentioned 
in other connections. There was a school, which 
still exists, called the Scottish. Carmichael was 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 339 

perhaps the first. He was succeeded by Hutche- 
son, who is best known from his theory in ethics. 
Oswald, Beattie, Price, Harris and Burnet were 
prominent. Adam Smith, the friend of Hume, is 
well known as a writer on political science, but he 
was also the author of a system of morals. Fer- 
guson was also eminent as an ethical writer. 
Thomas Reid was the greatest metaphysician 
belonging to the school, with the single exception 
of Hamilton. Reid gave it a new departure and 
placed it upon a better philosophic basis. All of 
them with the possible exception of Smith were 
decided spiritualists or anti-materialists, and he 
with all the others believed in a future life. 

With Kant's Critique of Pure Reason there 
commenced a new era in modern philosophy. 
For a long time a disciple of the Wolfian L,eibnitz- 
ian school, he was aroused by the skepticism of 
Hume to seek a surer foundation for philosophy. 
He started the Germans upon a new career, and 
his influence went into France, crossed over the 
English Channel, and came even into America. 
He was a natural realist, but awakened tendencies 
both to skepticism and idealism. He admits that 
the ego must regard itself as a simple immaterial 
substance, but denies that we are able to pass to 



340 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the synthetic judgment that it is simple and im- 
material. He proves that the soul is immortal 
from the practical necessity of an existence suffi- 
cient for the complete fulfilment of the moral law. 
We cannot attain to perfect holiness, and the con- 
flict can be brought to an end only through an 
eternal progression. 

Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were Absolute 
Idealists. They ran the idealistic element in 
Kant into pantheism or the doctrine of Absolute 
Identity. Fichte held to a future life. Schelling 
and Hegel were less pronounced. Hegel's follow- 
ers divided into two schools. Fichte and Goschel 
maintained a personal immortality. Conradi, 
Michelet and others maintained the extinction of 
the individual. Ruge's Journal became so radical 
that it was suppressed by the government. 

Kant's philosophy for various reasons awakened 
opposition. Some from the Leibnitzian school, as 
Eberhard, Schwab, and Mendelssohn, opposed it be- 
cause of its radical departure. Herder opposed its 
dualism. G. K. Schulze, somewhat skeptical, at 
first opposed but afterwards approached it. Some 
others criticised the idealistic elements in it. But 
it gathered around it a host of friends, some of 
whom were faithful interpreters, and others while 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 341 

retaining its fundamental principles modified it. 
Schiller is the most widely known, but Reinhold, J. 
Schultz, Schmid, Krug, Fries, Bouterweg, Abicht, 
and Bardilli, were all able men. Some of these 
maintained clearly and distinctly the doctrine of 
the separate nature of the mind, but others, as Fries 
and Beck and Bardilli, approximated absolutism. 

Schelling also had a large number of able dis- 
ciples. A few, like Klein and Wagner, were 
pantheists. Some like Oken and Essenbeck made 
his philosophy the basis of natural science. Oken 
said that mind is the polarity of the immaterial, 
and that the antagonism in the animal life re- 
appears as attributes of man. Others devoted 
themselves to speculative philosophy. Krause 
held that the ego is an organized and independent 
being, and is a spiritual organized whole. He re- 
garded Christianity as the end of philosophical 
opinions. Berger thought that mind is the organ- 
izing and vitalizing principle. Steffens said that 
humanity conceals in itself a presentiment of an 
infinite future. Baader opposed pantheism. He 
believed in a personal future life. If we accept 
salvation in Christ, we have immortality. Souls 
in Hades may still be saved, but those in hell are 
forever lost. 



342 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Jacobi, a younger contemporary of Kant, and one 
of his critics, taught doctrines that exerted a strong 
influence upon many subsequent philosophers. He 
doubted the ability of reason to solve the great 
problems of the world, and sought to raise himself 
above the understanding through faith in God. 
The spirit, the innermost essence in us, comes from 
God. He acknowledges a Christianity whose 
essential elefnent is faith in a personal God and 
the eternity of human personality. 

Schleiermacher, whose life ended in 1834, was 
not only a great theologian but also a distinguished 
philosopher. He has been charged with panthe- 
istic tendencies. He said that the time will come 
when the Father will be all in all, but that time is 
out of all time. His influence has been deeply felt 
in theological circles. 

Schopenhauer is known widely from his pessi- 
mism. He pronounced the world the worst of all 
possible worlds. His study of the power of the 
will prevented him from falling into the belief in 
annihilation, but he shows great sympathy with 
the early Christian ascetics, and with Hindu peni- 
tents seeking relief from life in the unconsciousness 
of Nirvana. 

Herbart opposes absolutism, and has had a larger 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 343 

number of disciples than any philosopher of the 
century except Hegel. He taught that the soul is 
a simple and real essence. If it were not simple 
its ideas would lie outside of each other, and unity 
of thought would be impossible. It is located at 
a single point in the brain. 

Beneke closely resembles the Scotch realists. 
He developed a philosophy based on internal ex- 
perience. We know ourselves through self-con- 
sciousness and the world through the senses. The 
soul is a perfectly immaterial being. The soul of 
man differs from the soul of the brute by its spir- 
itual character. The difference in the elementary 
forces, the possession of hands, language and edu- 
cation, are causes of the spiritual superiority of 
men over the lower animals. 

Trendelenburg taught that the essence of things 
came from the creative thought. There is con- 
structive motion directed by final causes. When 
force and end coincide in the same subject, there is 
personality. The soul is a self-realizing final idea. 
It is not a result of natural forces, but a principle. 
In man it thinks the eternal, and thus is elevated 
above the brutes. 

Ulrici, of Halle, has become distinguished by 
his anti-materialistic discussions. He is recognized 
as a master both in philosophy and natural science. 



344 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

IvOtze, of Gottingen, ranks among the great 
philosophers of our century. He was claimed at 
first by the Materialists, but he is rather an Idealist. 
He declared himself a believer in a personal God. 
" Perfect personality is reconcilable only with the 
conception of an Infinite Being, for in finite beings 
only an approximation to this is attainable." He 
held that the origin of the body and of the soul 
were simultaneous, and that souls are immortal, 
not because of the nature of the substance, but 
because they realize such a degree of goodness that 
they cannot be lost. 

Materialism has had a prominent place in the 
discussions in Germany. The Materialists have 
been conspicuous in part for their ability, and 
more from the boldness of the utterance of a few 
of the most radical. Feuerbach, Moleschott, Buch- 
ner, Vogt, Czolbe, are gross materialists. Feuer- 
bach, first a Hegelian, then an atheist, said "the 
•ego is the only absolute," and that sensuous enjoy- 
ment is the highest good of man. He denied 
the immortality of men. Vogt said that "physi- 
ology pronounces definitely against the idea of in- 
dividual immortality, and indeed against all notions 
founded upon that of an independent existence of 
the soul." "Psychical activities are only func- 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 345 

tions of the brain." Buchner took the same 
ground. Czolbe was content with the natural 
world, in which all that is true and good and 
beautiful is found. He ascribes eternity to astro- 
nomical bodies, but not to men. Moleschott said 
"a man is what he eats," but did not positively 
deny all spiritual elements in us. 

Among the more conservative materialists are 
Liebig, Du Bois Reymond, Muller, Wagner, and 
Virchow. The utterances of these men sometimes 
appear grossly materialistic, but each of them in 
other connections sets limits to the inferences to be 
drawn from their statements of facts. Virchow, 
who seems generally to be among the extremists, 
announces the principle that science can testify 
only to that which comes within its comprehension, 
and leaves to faith all other matters. I^iebig, 
after saying "this mysterious vital principle can 
be replaced by the chemical forces," and that "the 
true cause of death is the respiratory process," says 
"the higher mental phenomena in the present 
state of science cannot be referred to their prox- 
imate cause, and still less to their ultimate. We 
know only that they exist." "Everything in the 
organism goes on under the influence of a vital 
force, an immaterial agent, which the chemist can- 
15* 



346 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

not employ at will." " Muller said much to re- 
habilitate matter," says Prof. Bain. But Muller 
bore this testimony: "There is nothing in the 
facts of natural science which argues against the 
possibility of the existence of an immaterial prin- 
ciple independent of matter, though its powers be 
manifested in organic bodies." Wagner supposed 
that the soul is a sort of ether in the brain, but he 
assails the doctrine of Vogt, and asserts that science 
is not sufficiently advanced to decide the question 
in regard to the soul, and that the gap should be 
filled up by the belief in a permanent mental indi- 
vidual substance. He avows his belief in a local 
existence after death and the possible return to the 
earth in another body. Du Bois Reymoud re- 
garded the problem of sense-perception insoluble. 
"What imaginable connection between distinct 
movements of distinct atoms in my brain and facts 
primitive for me, incapable of further definition, 
beyond all possible denial — facts like these : I feel 
pain, I hear the tones of an organ, I see something 
red ; and the assurance just as directly flowing 
from them: therefore, I am." 

Efforts have been made to reconcile materialism 
with the doctrine of immortality. Drossbach wrote 
several works with this aim. Flugel supposed that 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 347 

the mental functions are centered in a single atom. 
Spiess thought it probable that a germ of higher 
order is developed which will render possible indi- 
vidual immortality. New systems have been pro- 
posed by which the interests of science and relig- 
ion might be conserved. A host of able men from 
scientific ranks as well as from speculative philoso- 
phy have appeared as champions of the old faiths. 
When we review the period and sum up results, 
we are surprised at the very small number who 
have avowed the belief that there is nothing be- 
yond the grave. 

In France the sensational philosophy had in the 
beginning of the present century a few representa- 
tives. Cabanis soon died. Destutt de Tracy re- 
cedes from the teaching of Condillac in his idea of 
externality, which sensation alone cannot give. 
De Gerando develops the sensational theory of 
language, but in the latter part of his life he 
abandoned many of his former principles. The 
reaction took two directions : the one from the 
side of the Church, and is called the Theological 
school ; the other from the side of philosophy, 
and is known as the Spiritualistic or Eclectic 
school. Keratry and Laromiquiere were forerun- 
ners of these schools. Of the Spiritualistic, Royer- 



348 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Collard was the founder. He was succeeded by 
M. de Biran. Cousin gave it the name of Eclec- 
tic. He was the most profound as well as the 
most eloquent expounder of its principles. His 
philosophy has been charged with pantheistic ten- 
dencies, but he disclaimed pantheism. Among his 
pupils, Bouillier, Damairon, JoufTroy, Saisset and 
Janet, have become eminent. The influence of 
the school has been strong in England, America, 
Switzerland, Holland, and been felt also in Ger- 
many. 

Comte, the founder of the Positive Philosophy, 
was very pretentious, and has had some following 
in France and England. Lewes closes his history 
with him. He professed to be neither an atheist 
nor a theist. He discarded all metaphysics, and 
knew nothing but phenomena and the causes im- 
manent in the universe. He knew no greater being 
than humanity. He had a religion, but its worship 
was rendered to women representing the best of 
humanity. If any place was left for a future life, it 
is of very doubtful tenure. 

Among the metaphysical writers now living, 
Ribot is decidedly materializing. He predicts that 
a day will come when we shall have a psychology 
without a soul. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 349 

Scientific men, as Cuvier and Quatrefages, in 
the name and interest of science alone, have re- 
jected materialistic conclusions. The memory of 
the results of the cry, " Death is an eternal sleep," 
is too fresh in the French mind to allow any hasty 
return to it. 

In Scotland the Common Sense Philosophy was 
carried over from the last to the present century 
by Dugald Stewart. He stoutly opposes material- 
ism, but expresses himself cautiously in regard to 
the philosophic evidence of another life. " Al- 
though we have the strongest evidence that there 
is a thinking and sentient principle within us 
essentially distinct from matter, yet we have no 
direct evidence of the possibility of this principle 
exercising its various powers in a separate state 
from the body. On the contrary, the union of the 
two while it lasts is of the most intimate nature."* 
He was succeeded by Dr. Brown, a decided spirit- 
ualist, who taught Cosmothetic Idealism. After 
Mackintosh, Sir William Hamilton was elected to 
the chair of Philosophy in Edinburgh University, 
and soon proved himself one of the greatest meta- 
physicians of the age. He put Natural Realism 
upon a firmer basis, and lifted into respectability 

* Quoted by Bain. 



350 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

and power a school hitherto decried. He taught 
theism and a future life. His most eminent dis- 
ciple was Mansel. Calderwood, while dissenting 
from Hamilton's Philosophy of the Conditioned, 
teaches the Scotch philosophy. His short argu- 
ment for a future existence is good. * 

James Ferrier, Professor in St. Andrews, criti- 
cised the philosophy of Reid, but was idealistic. 
Prof. Bain, of Aberdeen, belongs to the Associa- 
tional school of England. He emphasizes the in- 
fluence of the body upon the mind, and strengthens 
the materialistic tendency, but neither affirms nor 
denies the distinct substance of the mind. 

The Associational school started by Hartley con- 

* After he concludes the argument he makes a distinction be- 
tween the idea of a future life and immortality. He says that 
" Immortality can not be proven from the immateriality of the 
soul, nor its ceaseless activity, nor the ideas of abstract beauty 
and goodness, nor its simplicity of being. The finite is not self- 
sufficient. Dependent it must be, dependent for its continu- 
ance. Futurity of existence is clearly involved in the facts of 
the present; eternity of existence must depend upon the divine 
will, and can be known only as a matter of distinct revelation, 
not as a matter of metaphysical speculation. All that is great- 
est in us points to an immeasurable future. Thither we look 
for the solution of many of our dark problems. But immor- 
tality, if it be ours, must be the gift of God." — See Handbook 
Moral Philosophy, p. 259. 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 35 1 

tinues to live. James Mill brought it over into the 
present century. Bentham expounded the morai 
principles involved. Grote and other philosophic 
writers in history accepted its philosophy. Lewes 
combined with it the spirit of Comte. J. Stuart 
Mill ranks among its greatest advocates. He 
thought that the hope of a future life was phil- 
osophically defensible. Herbert Spencer is now 
recognized as the chief metaphysician of the 
school. He carried its principles into the support 
of Evolution. 

Huxley, Tyndal, and Darwin, so far as they 
accept metaphysical principles, are Association- 
alists. The common name applied to them all, 
and accepted at least by Huxley, is Agnostics. 
They have taken from Hamilton the doctrine of 
the relativity of knowledge, and they deny that we 
can know anything of the nature of being which 
lies back of phenomena. As expressed by J. S. 
Mill, we know only series of phenomena. We do 
not know what mind is in itself. They claim to 
be incompetent to determine anything in regard 
to the destiny of the soul. They have accordingly 
avoided in general any expression of opinion upon 
the subject. 

Among writers of materialistic influence are the 



352 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

younger Ferrier, Maudsley and Carpenter. 
Ferrier is the more pronounced. Maudsley, true 
to the principle of the Agnostic philosophy, says 
"the nature of mind is a question which science 
can not touch," but he proceeds to give an ac- 
count of the faculties, including conscience, which 
the grossest materialist might accept. 

The Evolution theory has its bearing upon the 
doctrine of another life. Tylor has attempted in 
its interest to account for the belief among 
savages. The ablest exponents do not find in the 
theory anything necessarily opposed to the hope 
of immortality. Darwin is reported to have 
written in a private letter near the close of his life 
that he did not believe in Theism, but in the early 
part of his work said repeatedly that there is no* 
good reason why his theory should shock the 
religious feelings of any one. Mivart very decidedly 
asserts that the theory is reconcilable with the 
contents of Christianity. Richard Owen agrees 
with him. Wallace in a recent work, while 
bringing out new facts and principles in support 
of the laws of which he was contemporaneously a 
discoverer with Darwin, re-affirms the fact that the 
human mind does not fall within the theory. 

In America, we have some philosophic men 



SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 353 

whose names have gone into history: Jonathan 
Edwards, Upham, Wayland, Hickok, Mark Hop- 
kins, Mahan, Chadbourne, Agassiz, Asa Gray, 
Payne, Channing, Bowen and Emerson. Among 
those now living, McCosh and Porter are most 
widely known. There are a large number of 
younger men of great ability, who are studying 
the problems of the age. Every one whose' name 
is here given, except perhaps Emerson, who was 
a pantheistic philosophic essayist, was a firm be- 
liever in a personal immortality. Not a single 
man whose ability as a philosopher has com- 
manded recognition, has avowed a contrary faith. 
Recently, Dr. McCosh asserted that every professor 
of physical science under thirty years of age, in 
our respectable colleges, accepts the doctrine of 
evolution. If it be true, it is not evolution of the 
atheistic type. Prof. Fiske, himself a zealous ad- 
vocate of the Darwinian theory, finds in it a proof 
of immortality. It "shows us distinctly for the 
first time how the creation and perfecting of man 
is the goal towards which nature's work has all the 
while been tending. It develops tenfold the sig- 
nificance of human life, places it upon a loftier 
eminence than poets or prophets have imagined, 
and makes it seem more than ever the chief object 



354 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

of that creative activity which is manifested in the 
physical universe." 

From the nature of the proof, it is among phil- 
osophers that we expect most doubt in regard to 
another life. This review shows us how very few 
comparatively of those who have attained distinc- 
tion have not regarded it as most probable, if not 
certain. Some of those who have denied it have 
attracted attention simply by the boldness and 
rashness of their utterances. The voice of philos- 
ophy as given by her greatest interpreters is very 
emphatically for our future existence. We have 
no fears that when the facts being gathered by 
natural science shall be summed up, and the 
legitimate inference drawn, the result will be dif- 
ferent from the intuitive hope of mankind. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE. 

THE Pyrrhonist is wrong. There is at least 
some truth accessible to human minds. We 
are sure that we know some things. Life is not a 
complete delusion. If we know nothing more, we 
are certain, even upon the supposition of skepti- 
cism, that it is best to adjust ourselves to circum- 
stances and make the most of them. Manifestly 
the world is not a haphazard affair. There are 
some laws, some principles, bringing uniformities 
upon which we may form opinions and determine 
our conduct. If philosophic theories are all wrong, 
and speculative philosophy impossible, there are 
some great practical truths which we can never 
disregard with safety. The man of affairs must 
obey the laws of economy, or fail in business. The 
court must observe the rules of evidence determin- 
ing innocency and guilt, or it inflicts the greatest 
wrongs. The student must regard the laws of 
mental acquisition, or he remains in ignorance. 
Disregard of the laws of hygiene brings disease and 
early death. No one really doubts the facts of 
(355) 



356 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

experience. Practical result is a test of truth. 
Nothing is false which brings always good results, 
and nothing is true which always bears bad fruits. 
The test is not directly applicable to a large part 
of speculative philosophy; but so far as it can be 
applied, the world has no hesitation in forming its 
opinion, and no doubt as to the correctness of its 
judgment. Experience and reason unite to con- 
demn as false a principle whose consequences are 
always hurtful. The decision rendered in the light 
of practical influences is final. We will try the 
doctrine of another life by this criterion. 

The disbelief in a future life is injurious to moral 
character. In a perfect state, men may do right 
because it is right. Persons trained in a moral 
atmosphere, with ideas of right and wrong formed 
under the influence of the doctrine of the immor- 
tality of man, may find a beauty and good in virtue 
that sustain a beautiful character without any re- 
spect to ends beyond the present life. But that is 
not the character of men as they appear in history. 
They "see and approve the better, but follow the 
worse." The insubordinate passions need to be 
restrained by law; but there can be no law, at least 
for disordered nature, without penalty. The de- 
sign of penalty is to secure obedience; and the 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 357 

greater and more certain the punishment, the more 
uniform the obedience. Great penalties are neces- 
sary to hold in check the inordinate desires of our 
corrupt nature. But if this life is all, every punish- 
ment is temporary, every reward transient, and 
• death swallows up guilt and innocence, pain and 
pleasure, in utter annihilation. Retribution may 
often be escaped in this world, and even if the 
worst comes it is soon over; but if there is another 
life, escape is no longer possible, and the punish- 
ment is forever prolonged. How much the world 
needs this restraint is seen from the corruptions in 
society in spite of the belief of everlasting penalty. 
The lovely character of a few who have abandoned 
the belief in a future life, offers no serious difficulty 
to this conclusion; for both their character and idea 
of virtue have been formed under other influences, 
and remain in defiance of the natural consequences 
of their new faith. The philosophy which per- 
suades men that they die like beasts, cannot long 
sustain them in a life above that of the beast. 

If morality is anything more than a wider pru- 
dence it is founded upon eternal truth, and the 
obligation is eternal. But if this life is all, our 
relations are limited and temporal, and for us there 
can be no true morality. We are only more saga- 



358 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

cious animals, and moral character is a delusion. 
Right and wrong are priestcraft and statecraft, and 
we may rid ourselves of the shackles, and disregard 
these laws, when we can do so without serious per- 
sonal injury. If a man believes in a life hereafter 
he will be more correct in his character, both be- 
cause of the penalty and the higher conception of 
moral obligation, than he will be if he does not. 
An infidel may, from the force of early training, 
be a better man than another who believes; but 
the same man will have a better character because 
of his faith in a future life than he will without it. 
As this is true of individuals, it must be true of 
society. The loss of faith in a future life must 
therefore degrade society. 

Philosophic men have frequently noted the rela- 
tion of the belief in another life to moral character. 
Polybius said that there is a need of the dread of the 
invisible to keep in subordination the insubordi- 
nate passions. He praised the ancients who intro- 
duced among the people the belief of the gods and 
the things of a future world. He pronounced the 
superstition with which the Roman people had 
been reproached the firmest pillar of the Roman 
State.* Strabo, the celebrated geographer, agreed 

* Neander. 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 359 

with the great historian. He said that the multi- 
tude of women and the entire mass of common 
people cannot be led to piety by philosophy. For 
this purpose superstition is necessary, which must 
call in the aid of myths and tales of wonder. 
These things the founders of the States employed 
as bugbears to awe childish people. * So the states- 
men of that day, when they had lost faith in the- 
popular religion and pronounced it superstition,, 
upheld the public worship as a necessary means of 
restraining the masses. Voltaire regarded the be- 
lief in an avenging and rewarding God as the 
necessary support to morals, and said: "If God did 
not exist it would be necessary to invent one. " f 
Condorcet said that "Voltaire remained in almost 
absolute uncertainty as to the spirituality of the 
soul and its permanence after the death of the 
body; but as he believed the last opinion useful, 
like the belief in the existence of God, he rarely 
allowed himself to show his doubts, and almost 
always insisted more on the proofs than the objec- 
tions." X Robespierre declared before the French 
National Convention, that "the idea of a Supreme 

* Geography In. Ch. 2, Sec. 8. 
f Ueberweg, History of Philos. 
% Cairns, Rationalism of XVIII. Cen. 



360 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Being and of the immortality of the soul is a con- 
tinual call to justice, and no nation can succeed 
without the recognition of these truths. "* Fred- 
erick the Great fostered atheism, and lived long 
enough to observe its fruits upon the morals of his 
people. When an old man he said he would give 
his best battle to restore the popular faith as it was 
at the time of his father's death. Mazzini ob- 
served that "the doctrine of materialism is the 
philosophy of all epochs which are withering to 
the grave, and of all nations sinking to ex- 
tinction." The causes which make materialism 
acceptable to a people, find in it when intro- 
duced a' most powerful ally in their destructive 
work. Huber said, u We dare not allow the spirit 
of the idealistic philosophy to be lost, if we are to 
have any guarantee of a great and happy future for 
our native land." Rudolph Wagner, the eminent 
German naturalist, in a controversy with Vogt, 
maintained the belief in a future life as necessary 
to moral order. He said at the meeting in Gottin- 
gen, "The morality which flows from scientific 
materialism may be comprehended within these 
few words : 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die.' All noble thoughts are but vain dreams, 

* Hurst, History of Rationalism. 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF" DISBELIEF. 36 1 

the effusions of automata with two arms, running 
about on two legs, which, being finally decom- 
posed into chemical atoms, combine themselves 
anew, resembling the dance of lunatics in a mad- 
house." To the address of which this was a part, 
Vogt replied only with sneers. 

Some of the materialistic and skeptical philoso- 
phers have ventured to give utterance to some of 
the moral ideas which follow from the denial of a 
future life, and indicate the character which issues. 
Hobbes said that the civil law is the only founda- 
tion of right and wrong, and every man has a right 
to all things, and may get them if he can with 
safety to himself. Boliugbroke said that as long as 
sensuality and avarice can be safely indulged they 
may be lawfully gratified; that as man lives only 
in this world, he is only a superior animal, and that 
the chief end of man is to gratify the inclinations 
of the flesh. Hume said that adultery must be 
practiced if men would obtain all the advantages 
of life ; that if generally practiced it would in time 
cease to be scandalous, and if practiced secretly 
and frequently it would by degrees come to be 
thought no crime at all. Adultery if known is a 
trifling thing, and if unknown nothing at all.* 

* Home's Introduction. 
16 



362 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

These conclusions would become at length uni- 
versal, and private virtue and public order would 
go down into horrible ruin. 

The judgment of philosophers as to the effect of 
the loss of faith in future retributions is verified by 
experience. Not every individual who abandons 
hope of another life carries out his principles to 
their ultimate consequences, because character is 
largely moulded, before these speculations begin ; 
but in nearly all cases there is a deterioration. 
Sometimes it happens that one, more reckless than 
the others, applies his new faith in its fullest extent 
to his own life, and exhibits in himself all the stages 
down to complete degradation. We are sometimes 
shown in one character the various steps through 
which society will go on its way to destruction. 
We have such a case in Bahrdt, the German ration- 
alist. He went, as he himself tells us, to Geissen 
as yet very orthodox. His belief in the divinity 
of the Scriptures, in the direct mission of Jesus, in 
His miraculous history, in the Trinity, in natural 
corruption, in the justification of the sinner by lay- 
ing hold of the merits of Christ, and especially in 
the whole theory of satisfaction, seemed immovable. 
He had explained to himself a little better the work 
of the Holy Spirit so as not to exclude man's 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 363 

activity. He had limited a little the idea of orig- 
inal sin, and in the doctrine of atonement he had 
endeavored to uphold the value of virtue. In the 
doctrine of the Holy Supper he was more Reformed 
than Lutheran. But he fell under the influence 
of rationalism, and dropped point after point of his 
orthodoxy. His moral character soon began to 
retrograde. By tricky management he secured his 
election to a professor's chair. He used his posi- 
tion {or the purpose of sneering at the Church and 
good men of the past. He criticised the Bible. 
He spent his evenings in gambling and in houses 
of prostitution. He devoted his brilliant powers 
to the purpose only of making money. He lost 
his position in Leipsic, and after years of wander- 
ings he settled in Halle, where his scandalous con- 
duct drew sympathy from the public to his neg- 
lected and abused wife. He died from the effects 
of his excesses. In Bahrdt we have a lamentable 
illustration of the demoralizing and destroying 
power of a want of faith in immortality. 

We see the effects best in successive generations. 
In Rome during the earlier centuries, the civic 
virtues were marked features of the public char- 
acter. Lucretia dies rather than seem an adulteress. 
Regulus goes voluntarily back to Carthage to suffer 



364 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the most refined tortures rather than violate a 
promise. Fabricius scorned the offer made by the 
physician of Pyrrhus to destroy the great enemy of 
Rome. Cato was grave, and by his severe guard- 
ianship of the public morals lives in history as the 
Censor. There was decline in public character 
with the widening conquests and the consequent 
introduction of wealth and luxury. The moral 
tone of society was lowered, and Epicurean phil- 
osophy found an entrance. Lucretius clothed it in 
the fascinating dress of elegant poetry. The de- 
cline became rapid, and from the time of Augustus 
the moral condition of the people was horrible. 
The historical students of that period all agree as 
to the extreme degradation. The shamelessness 
of the prostitutions of the court indicates the public 
feeling. The palaces of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, 
Vitellus, Domitian, Commodus, Heliogabalus, and 
a number of others, were a disgrace to humanity. 
Paul has given a picture as it appeared from 
common fame to a Christian, and one blushes to 
read it. That account is confirmed by satirists. 
Juvenal, L,ucian and Perseus paint it in as dark 
lines as Paul. Christianity introduced a new life, 
and retarded the progress of the festering sore in 
the heart of the empire, but could not prevent the 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 365 

fall. The great statesmen, like Trajan, Aurelius, 
Diocletian, Constantine, Julian, Justinian, Theo- 
dosius the Great, struggled ineffectually against the 
tide. Rome became a prey to the arms of the 
barbarians. That the want of faith in future retri- 
butions was the sole cause, or the great proximate 
cause, no one can maintain; but that a strong sense 
of that fact would have wrought a great change, if 
not complete reformation, is evident from the 
Christians who lived in the midst of the corrupting 
influences. 

For an example in modern times we turn to the 
French Revolution, where the principles of mate- 
rialistic philosophy found an opportunity for full 
play. That Revolution on its political side was 
the result of the Bourbon despotism, but it was 
aggravated and maddened by atheism. The change 
was inevitable, but it might have taken place as 
quietly as it did in England, but for the ideas scat- 
tered by the encylopedists. Materialism is respon- 
sible for the Reign of Terror. The movement com- 
menced as purely political, but soon manifested an 
extravagance in passion which revealed a false spirit 
animating it. As the movement advanced, the 
hidden cause of excesses became more and more 
open, until at length it boldly announced itself in 



366 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

the atheistic festival held at Notre Dame. The 
leaders were atheists, and they inspired the multi- 
tude to deeds of madness by the cry, u Death is an 
eternal sleep." The foundations of society were 
torn up. Women vied with men in coarseness and 
brutality. Suspicion was a sufficient reason for 
imprisonment. Summary trials, mocking justice, 
were followed by immediate execution. Plighted 
faith was empty, and the most sacred ties were 
ruthlessly broken. Life was cheap. Marat called 
for five hundred heads, then forty thousand, then 
two hundred and fifty thousand. Crowds escorted 
the victims to execution with insults and demoni- 
acal shouts. The wheels of the guillotine were 
never still, and the secret dagger was constantly 
busy. No age nor sex was safe. Old men, women, 
maidens and babes, were butchered. The river 
was thick with bodies, and the air was foul from 
the unburied dead. Suicide and madness were 
common, and fear hung over all. The story of 
that day sickens us. 

The triumph of materialism would not bring 
ordinarily such wholesale destruction, but it would 
feed the passions, and expose us to commotions, 
and induce maddened ferocity in every extraordi- 
nary excitement. Reigns of Terror would be com- 
mon. 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 367 

The loss of faith in another life diminishes the 
sum of happiness. Without this faith every life, 
except of a few vicious persons who dread eternal 
sufferings, must be made poorer, and most lives 
would be miserable. 

That it diminishes happiness follows from the 
fact that it diminishes morality. Happiness is not 
the end of morality, but is so closely connected 
with it that a large school of philosophers, known 
as utilitarians, have thought of the two as one. 
They believe that right is good because it is useful. 
In the order of nature they are so generally associ- 
ated that Utilitarianism has many strong facts to 
support it. Vice may have momentary enjoyment, m 
but not happiness. Immorality must bear its 
penalty, and it always leaves the heart not only 
unfilled, but dissatisfied. If the want of faith in a 
life beyond death undermines moral character, it 
must to the same extent darken the present life. 

It degrades love. If we are to be annihilated at 
death, we are only animal. We may be somewhat 
higher than the brutes, but after all our dignity is 
fictitious. Human nature as it appears in the in- 
dividual has very little worth. The feelings of 
either pleasure or pain in a being whose existence 
is so short, is unimportant to any one but himself. 



368 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

Any one may regard every other person as valuable 
so far as he is necessary to his own pleasure, but 
there is nothing in himself that should make him 
an object of concern. Personality is without 
sacredness. Humane feelings are fanaticism. "I 
may enslave my fellow if I need him. I may leave 
the fallen in his degradation. I am under no 
obligation to pity the miserable. I must get 
through my brief day as comfortably as I can, and 
if prudence demands I may respect laws; but if I 
am strong enough to defy all order, I am free to do 
so. Nature' whispers that is all wrong and false, 
but as she disappoints my instincts in regard to a 
future life, why should I pay attention to this?" 
Selfishness is enthroned. Love is only animal 
passion and a mask. Society is a herd. In the 
tomb of love lies happiness also; and love must go 
when man ceases to appear worthy of rational re- 
gard. 

Faith in a future life, even when it is not strong 
enough to curb all the vicious passions and save' 
from the sufferings of immoderate and sinful in- 
dulgences, may still be strong enough to add some- 
thing to the light of life. An immoral man, or an 
immoral age, may not be as wretched as they 
would be without this hope. ^ Rousseau gave a 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 369 

shameful picture of himself, but he was borne up 
from utter despair, as he himself testified, by his 
belief in a future life. So with Byron. In his 
darkest pictures there is detected behind them a sus- 
taining hope. The court of Charles II. of England, 
led on by the king himself, was gay and dissolute. 
Reaction from the unnatural restraints of Cromwell 
brought loose reins to indulgence. Cheerfulness 
was the law, and when not felt must be assumed. 
But moral restraint though widened was not utterly 
abandoned. It was not an infidel circle. In their 
frivolity they did not seriously consider the full 
claims of that hope upon moral conduct, yet the 
hope gave buoyancy to their life. They accepted 
the view of life formed upon the belief in immor- 
tality, and it lingered with them as a light for 
hours of darkness. If the king and his court could 
have been stripped of that faith, a paralyzing gloom 
would have settled upon them, or they would have 
sought to drown all sober thought in a wilder 
indulgence. The imperious L,ouis XIV. did not 
care to make his licentiousness respectable by ban- 
ishing religion and its hopes from his palace. 

There is an instinctive love of existence which 
materialistic philosophy antagonizes, and, there- 
fore, creates unhappiness. Mere death is regarded 
16* 



370 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

as a great evil. While it seems to be distant we 
are indifferent; but when sickness comes, or our 
circle is invaded, we cannot drive away the dark 
shadow which it throws around us. As age creeps 
on, the certainty of approaching death increases. 
Only a very few can think of dying without shud- 
dering. We all most profoundly pity the con- 
demned who looks to an early day when he must 
die. But if death were known to be annihilation, 
its terrors would be immeasurably increased. 
Bereft of the hope of awaking beyond death in 
another world, the miseries of the sick, the aged 
and the endangered would be inexpressible. 
Apathy more than stoic would be necessary to 
meet it with composure. 

We cannot get rid of sympathies altogether, no 
matter how low our philosophical view of our 
fellow men, and these sympathies must make us 
sometimes think upon the condition of the world. 
But if we suppose that this life is all, the evils that 
everywhere thrust themselves before us must make 
us miserable. The words put by Mrs. Browning 
upon the lips of Romney are not too strong: 

" I was heavy then 
And stupid and distracted with the cries 
Of tortured prisoners in the polished brass 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 37 1 

Of that Phalarian bull, society, 

Which seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls, 

But if you listen, moans and cries instead 

Despairingly, like victims tossed and gored 

And trampled by their hoofs. I heard the cries 

Too close : I could not hear the angels lift 

A fold of rustling air, nor what they said 

To help my pity. I beheld the world 

As one great famishing, carnivorous mouth, — 

A huge, deserted, callow, blind bird-thing 

With piteous open beak, that burst my heart 

Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped 

And tore the violets up to get the worms. 

' Worms — worms, ' was all my cry ; an open mouth, 

A gross want, bread to fill it to the lips, 

No more. That poor men narrowed their demands 

To such an end was virtue, I supposed, 

Adjudicating that to see it so 

Was reason. Oh, I did not push the case 

Up higher, and ponder how it answers when 

The rich take up the same cry for themselves, 

Professing equally, — 'An open mouth, 

A gross need, food to fill us, and no more.' 

Why, that's so far from virtue, only vice 

Can find excuse for it ! that makes libertines 

And slurs our cruel streets from end to end 

With eighty thousand women in one smile, 

Who only smile at night beneath the gas." * 

Such thoughts must press themselves upon us 
* Aurora Leigh. 



372 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

and blight the "violets" which grow along life's 
pathway, and mingle gall with every cup. With 
Schopenhauer we must regard the world as the 
worst possible, and sympathize with the hermit 
who fled as far as possible from it. 

Voltaire's uncertainty as to a future life made 
him often turn to the evils of the world. He said, 
"Strike out a few sages, and the crowd of human 
beings are nothing but an assemblage of unfortu- 
nate animals, and the globe contains nothing but 
corpses. I tremble to have to contemplate once 
more the Being of beings in casting an attentive 
eye over this terrible picture. / wish I had never 
been born." The thought of man as only mortal 
was too painful for him, and he cherished hope. 
4 ( The box of Pandora is the most beautiful picture 
of antiquity. Hope was at the bottom." Pliny, 
the elder, was thoroughly imbued with the skepti- 
cal opinions of his age, and the expression of his 
feelings for man became deeply pathetic. "All 
religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness and 
fear. What God is — if indeed he be anything dis- 
tinct from the world — it is beyond the compass of 
man's understanding to know. But it is a foolish 
delusion which has sprung from human weakness 
and human pride to imagine that such an infinite 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 373 

spirit would concern Himself with the petty affairs 
of men. It is difficult to say whether it might not 
be better for men to be wholly without religion 
than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach 
to its object. The vanity of man and his insatiable 
longing after existence have led him also to dream 
of life after death. A being full of contradictions, 
he is the most wretched of creatures, since the 
other creatures have no wants transcending the 
bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and 
wants that reach to infinity and can never be satis- 
fied. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest pov- 
erty with the greatest pride. Among these, so great 
evils, the best thing God has bestowed on man is the 
power to take his own life." It is not much won- 
der that men have declared a preference for super- 
stition rather than such enlightenment. "I would 
rather," says Richter, "dwell in the dim fog of 
superstition than in the air rarified to nothing by 
the air-pump of unbelief, in which the panting 
breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for 
breath." 

Bereavements take rank among the most pain- 
ful experiences of life. They come to all hearts. 
Every death brings sorrow to some circle, and 
every grave is bedewed with tears. Christianity, 



374' EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE UFE. 

by inspiring hopes of another life and a resurrec- 
tion of the body, has soothed these sorrows and 
proved herself the great benefactress of mankind. 
Materialism, by robbing of this hope, intensifies 
the pain and immeasurably augments the sum of 
human suffering. We may see what the loss 
would be by taking some historic examples of 
Christian patience, and then picture to ourselves 
what the grief must have been without that faith. 
We will take strong men, whose literary and social 
resources and wide-extended labors would have 
enabled them to divert their attention and avoid 
the blow. 

Martin L,uther, in 1642, was called to experience 
the loss of a dearly loved daughter, who died in 
the bloom of her youth. While she was sick, he 
said: "I love her dearly; but, O God, if it is Thy 
will to take her hence, I shall be content to have 
her with Thee." "Lenchen, my daughter," ad- 
dressing the sick girl, u you would like to remain 
w T ith your father here, and still you would like to 
depart to the Father beyond." She answered, 
" Yes, my dear father, as God wills." While she 
was dying he wept bitterly and prayed for her sal- 
vation. He looked at her as she lay in her coffin, 
and said, u O, dearest L,enchen, you will arise 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 375 

again and shine like a star — yes, like trie sun. In 
my spirit I am joyful, but according to the flesh I 
am full of grief: the flesh will not be content; the 
separation pains me exceedingly. It is strange 
that although she certainly is at rest, we are yet 
so sorrowful." Turning to those who mourned 
with him, he said: u I have sent a saint to heaven; 
O that we could have such a death ! I would wel- 
come it this very hour." In a letter to a dear 
friend he expressed himself grateful, amid his 
tears, for her happy escape from the temptation of 
life. 

Semler, whose influence over the rise of the Ra- 
tionalistic movement was so great as almost to en* 
title him to be called the father of it, like IyUther, 
was bereft of a daughter. It was the more afflict- 
ive because it followed so soon after the death of 
his dear wife. He describes it with his own pen. 
" About nine o'clock I again pronounced the bene- 
diction upon my dear daughter. With a breaking 
heart I lay down to sleep a little. She sent for 
me, and thus addressed me, c Pardon me, my dear 
father, I am so needy, and do help me to die with 
that faith and determination which your Christian 
daughter should possess. ' My heart took courage, 
and I spoke to her of the glories of the heavenly 



376 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

world which would soon break upon her. She 
sang snatches of sweet songs. When I addressed 
her, ( My dear daughter, you will soon rejoin your 
noble mother,' she answered, ( Oh, yes! and what 
rapture will I enjoy!' I fell down at her bedside, 
and again committed her soul to the enduring and 
almighty care of God. I left her, thinking she 
might last considerably longer, but was suddenly 
called from my lecture, when I committed her 
grand spirit to God, who gave it, and closed her 
eyes myself. My bitter grief now subsided into a 
calm affliction and a sweet acquiescence with the 
wise will of God. Now I know the real joy of hav- 
ing seen a child die so calmly, and of feeling I had 
some share in the training that could end so tri- 
umphantly." 

Millions have wept and rejoiced as Luther and 
Semler did, feeling a real joy that the loved ones 
had gone to await their coming. After the words 
"Dust to dust," the language of the service, re- 
peating the assurances of another life, has fallen 
upon the ear of the mourning world as the sweet- 
est music. Blot them out, and who can measure 
the loss to humanity? 

Not many cases of bereavement without the 
hope of another life have been recorded. They 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OE DISBELIEF. 377 

are so unnatural, so cold and rigid, seemingly so 
destitute of feeling, or they are so full of despair 
and anguish, the pen hesitates to describe them. 
Not many cases occur. Materialistic faith breaks 
down before the face of a dying friend. It was 
at his mother's death Hume said he believed 
like other people. A brilliant lecturer in our own 
day, who professes atheism and denies a future 
life, could, at the grave of his father-in-law, talk 
beautifully but heartlessly of the noble life, gone 
as the fragrance of a withered flower or as the 
song of a dying bird, but as he stood by the coffin 
of a tenderly-loved brother he spoke of the de- 
parted life as a river with which his own would 
one day be reunited, and then they would flow on 
serenely and sweetly together forever. Not until 
we are animalized and love crushed will the heart 
cease its instinctive testimony at the side of the 
grave. 

When we apply the test of practical results, the 
evidence is not doubtful. Even though we were 
not able to detect the errors in the logic of mate- 
rialism, yet we know that a doctrine must be false 
which belies the dignity of man, turns virtue into 
sagacious prudence, undermines the social order, 
petrifies the heart, and exhibits the Creator as the 



3J8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE UFE. 

creature of caprice and injustice. But a faith that 
inspires the highest aspirations after worthiness of 
character, secures the deepest happiness, harmo- 
nizes man with the order of the world, is conso- 
nant with the instinctive utterances of his own 
nature, and gives greatest glory to Him who 
formed the world, must be true. This life cannot 
be all. We are not flashes between two nights of 
nothingness. The body dies, but we live forever. 



THE END. 



AT 



